


Colonis

by thisiszircon



Series: The Moment of Awakening [6]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: F/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-07-26 22:05:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 55,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7592080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisiszircon/pseuds/thisiszircon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Colonis: the first planet to be colonised by human beings outside of Earth's solar system.  It's all drizzle and mud, prefabricated shelters, make do and mend.  The whole place makes you feel like you're on an ill-equipped camping trip, only there's no chance of chucking it in and going home.</p><p>The Doctor and Ace show up alongside a boatload of new arrivals, to witness a colony about to tear itself apart.  There are rival political factions among the colonists, an unhappy indigenous species watching from the wings, and a killer eyeing up a population that is isolated, vulnerable and continually distracted.</p><p>The Doctor is adamant that their presence here is necessary.  Ace is soon convinced, however, that there's something he's not telling her...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> With grateful thanks to my invaluable beta-reader and editor, [Nemo the Everbeing](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemo_the_Everbeing)

_Colonis, 2259_  
_Shuttle-port south of Settlement Alpha_

_Day One_  
_1:15 pm_

 

"This is ridiculous," Ace complained.  "I mean, look at us - we're queueing!"

With a weary sigh, the Doctor agreed, "There is a definite queue."

She didn't know why he sounded so fed up.  She thought she'd done pretty well to keep quiet about it for the last fifteen minutes.  "It's like waiting for the doors at Greenford Disco," she said, glaring at the line in front of them: an uninteresting tableau consisting of the backs of people's heads.

"Is it?"

"Yeah.  Or trying to buy a gift-set from Boots on Christmas Eve."

"Hmm."

"Adventurers to cashier number four, please," she sing-songed, revelling in her sarcasm.

He turned to face her, and he narrowed his eyes.  "How do you know there's going to be an adventure?"

Ace snorted.  "When is there not?"

"Ah."

"But there's got to be better ways to show up for an adventure than this."

"Quite, quite possibly."

"Queueing in a shuttle-port?  Along with a zillion other people?"  She looked around them and added, "In the bloody rain?"

"You've made your point," the Doctor griped.

"Good.  Here's another one.  That shuttle down from the spaceship was seriously uncomfortable."

"Yes, yes, I'll get right on to the travel agent," he muttered.

"So why did we come this way?  Not exactly direct, is it?  I mean, if we needed to get to, I don't know, New York or something, the TARDIS wouldn't just land us at Heathrow."

"Maybe she would.  If it were necessary."

"So all this queueing is necessary?"

"Possibly."

Ace glanced at him.  He was gazing into the middle distance, looking all alien and enigmatic.  Sometimes she wondered whether he practised the look in front of the mirror.

"So what's that s'posed to mean?"  She mimicked his voice.  "'Possibly.'"  She rolled her eyes.  "You don't deal in possibilities.  You sit in the library, and you research and you plot and you work it all out, and then you don't tell anyone else what the plan is and get pissed off when they do things that aren't part of your all-powerful Time Lord script."

"Oh, is that what I do?"  For a moment he looked like his he was going to lose his temper, then he sighed the annoyance away.  "I suppose I do prefer to avoid possibilities."  The Doctor frowned.  "Or strong probabilities."  He winced at himself, then his weird, irritable mood lifted and he offered her a smirk instead.  "But it all seems to be working out.  Don't forget our tickets," he reminded her, patting the inside pocket of his jacket.

Yes.  The tickets.

About three hours ago the TARDIS had materialised in the cargo hold of a deep-space passenger liner, which happened to be in orbit above this planet.  Ace and the Doctor had left the TARDIS and explored for a while.  They'd ended up in a shuttle-bay, where they'd been asked politely for their documentation by some kind of ticket collector.  Rather than flash an old UNIT ID, or fall back on his favourite tactic of "act like you own the place" - which, by the way, almost never worked - the Doctor had flustered, checked his pockets, and finally produced two boarding passes with something of a flourish.  The collector had examined them with barely concealed boredom and then sent them along to what was, apparently, their assigned shuttle.

So - as far as Ace could tell - the paperwork which had legitimised their presence on the liner had pinged into existence some time between leaving the TARDIS and meeting the ticket collector.  Of course, she suspected that its procurement had in fact been more mundane, involving preparation and back-story and the Doctor's impressive collection of era-specific credit cards.  He'd probably slipped it into his pocket days ago and then pretended to be surprised it was there.  But she didn't call him on it.  He liked his Merlin-moments.

The queue moved forward.  They shuffled along with the rest of the crowd.

The shuttle-port was chaotic, noisy and, frankly, make-do-and-mend, as was the colony it served: a colony that had just become the first outpost of humanity's expanding empire beyond Earth's solar system.  Around them were faces of all ages and hues, connected only by their glazed expressions; most of the people here had woken up from cryo-sleep less than eight hours ago.  It was a look that reminded her of Woodstock, where she'd celebrated her twentieth birthday a few weeks earlier.  As they'd spent a weekend immersed in music and fragrant smoke and an overwhelming absence of inhibition, Ace had seen many people wearing similarly glazed expressions: some tired, some wired, some both.  Thinking about it, though, the Woodstock crowd had probably had a lot more fun getting into that state than the people here.

The shuffling in the queue halted.  They'd made it a whole two steps closer to the exit.

Ace was beginning to regret leaving her rucksack in the TARDIS.  She foresaw the need for emergency rations before this queueing was done.  Still, the Doctor had been adamant.  Space was at a premium in the shuttles that ferried passengers down to the planet from orbit.  Which meant no hand baggage.  Most luggage was being dropped - more or less literally - from the orbiting liner to specified collection areas.  There were dedicated freight transporter pods for the task, with just enough in the way of shielding to prevent the contents from turning to ash, and just enough in the way of thrusters to prevent the contents from forming a smear over the ground on impact.  But Ace hadn't been given the opportunity to book her rucksack in to that system, even if she'd been willing to trust her gear to it.

She occupied herself for a moment by attempting to remove a spatter of mud from the side of her left boot with the toe of her right.  It didn't work, but the mud spread into a streak that looked a bit like a go-faster stripe.  Going faster was a lovely idea, but in that moment it was nothing but a pipe-dream.

"It wouldn't have been easier for us to take the TARDIS down here?" she asked.  "Maybe land on the other side of immigration?"

The Doctor was getting ever more impatient, as he always did when she came up with questions or comments he couldn't or wouldn't explain.  "Now really, Ace - with several galaxies to choose from-"

"-you can't always be blob-on accurate with the landing - yeah, I know.  Heard that one before," Ace scoffed.  "Doesn't really cut it when you can also pilot the ship right into Lady Peinforte's alchemy lab."

The Doctor glared at her, then stopped when she failed to look apologetic, or even to glare back.  Ace merely arched a brow.  "There's probably a reason," he suggested, back to his low-pitched mysterious-voice.  Then he sighed; the sound was just a little bit sad.  "Sometimes it's best to give the old girl her head."

"Right," she agreed, thinking about how the TARDIS had also picked the very suburban street in Perivale where kids were going missing.  "So you're not worried about leaving the TARDIS up there on the whacking big spaceship?"

"It's not going anywhere for months," he said.  "And the shuttles will be regular."

"Well we're gonna need a B&B or something, 'cause I'm not commuting through this every day."

"Of course not.  And we won't be here long."

"How long's not long?"

He hesitated.  The pause would have gone unnoticed by someone who wasn't able to read the Doctor's mannerisms as well as Ace could, but she noticed it, perhaps because she was, by now, actively looking for these subtle tells.  Something wasn't quite right with the Doctor.  Something was going on with this visit to Colonis; something she was missing.

"A few days," the Doctor replied, because when in doubt he always chose vagueness.

"Not a flying visit, then?"

"No."  He drew the word out as he spoke it; this made it sound oddly weighty.

"So you do actually know what we're doing here?  Ha!  I _knew_ there'd be an adventure."  She shot him a sideways look, inviting him to expand.  Perhaps through habit, the Doctor hesitated again.  "Oh, come on, Captain Covert."

The Doctor looked away.  "Colonis will become a thriving colony," he said.  "But it'll have teething troubles."

"Troubles like...?"

"Well, the planet's prone to meteor-strike.  But that's not too much of a problem, since humanity now has satellite protection systems for that.  The system will be in place before the next major impact is due."

"By 'major' you mean...?"

"The catastrophic kind."

"Ah.  Reassuring."

"Hmm.  There's also an indigenous species on this planet, so far overlooked by all the surveys.  Intelligent.  Socially organised.  Insectoid.  They live mainly underground in the western hills.  A hive mind.  Unfortunately, the settlers have started to quarry the stone here.  In the process they're blowing chunks out of the locals' home territory."

"Oh dear."

"But at the moment the settlers don't need to look further than each other for trouble."

Ace glanced around.  She'd noticed a factional element to the crowd of colonists.  Many people were sporting black armbands.  As if in defiance of this, a smaller number of people were wearing a splash of red, either in the form of an armband, scarf or belt.  The two sets were clearly uneasy with each other.

"Blacks and reds," she said.

"Yes," the Doctor agreed.

"And who's who?"

"Black armbands for the Mourners of Earth.  You'd know them as eco-warrior types.  This new life here was sold to them on the basis that Earth is overpopulated, polluted, used up.  The black armband is a mark of respect.  They grieve.  They believe mankind has killed its home planet."

"So they'll be for living in balance with nature, not making the same mistakes again?" Ace theorised.

"A neat summary of their manifesto," the Doctor agreed.

"Okay, and the reds?"

"More of a mixture, but united by the fact that they believe mankind has earned the right to colonise new worlds.  Their argument: if humanity can get itself here, it can do what it likes with the place."

"Great.  They want to strip-mine Colonis."

"Certainly metaphorically."

"Why the red, then?"

"Oh, that's just to annoy the Mourners.  Like showing up to a funeral in a clown outfit."

Ace repressed a shudder at the mention of clowns.  "So how come the reds are even here, if the colony's supposed to be all tie-dye and lentils?"

"It isn't.  It was just pitched that way to some.  To others - those who want to enjoy a modern, spacious colony on a planet with untapped mineral reserves - it was pitched differently."  He shrugged.  "It'll take another hundred years and a second major war with the Daleks before humanity finally breaks free of capitalism.  In the meantime, this colony is a business project.  Investors want their return."

Ace nodded.  "So Colonis Inc. said what the punters want to hear.  Just to get the cash flow going."  She sighed.  "Not like it's easy to complain when you're a six-month cryo-sleep away from advertising standards."

"Indeed.  And now they're here, all these blacks and reds.  All herded together in one small settlement, right along with their irreconcilable differences."

"Right."  She looked around cautiously.  "So how come they aren't already throwing punches?"

"Because if you wish to qualify for entry into this new colony, you may not have a criminal record."

"So they're waiting?"

"At least until they get through the checkpoint there," the Doctor said, nodding at the uniformed guards up ahead.

Ace puffed her cheeks out as she exhaled.  "Well this is an accident waiting to happen."

"Indeed," he replied.  He fished his watch out of his top pocket, flicked it open with a practised sweep of his thumb, and peered at the various screens and dials inside.  His expression, not really sunny and carefree to begin with, grew tense.  In a mutter he added, "I could not agree more."  He snapped the watch shut and shoved it back in his pocket with what seemed like unreasonable force.

She looked at the Doctor.  "Right then.  Out with it."

"Out with what?"

"Whatever it is you aren't saying."

He immediately looked furtive.  "What makes you say that?"

"The fact that you're being worryingly informative."

The Doctor frowned.  "Now I'm being berated for _sharing_ information?"

"Challenged.  Not berated.  You're never good with sharing.  Not unless you have to be."

"Yes, well, sometimes needs must."

"Or are you a fake-Doctor?  Is that it?"  Ace regarded him suspiciously and then poked him with a finger.  "Hmm.  Not a holographic disguise.  Still.  Maybe some fiendish villain has kidnapped you and replaced you with this clone-"

"Oh, really, Ace, you called me 'Captain Covert' a minute ago!"

"Oh, I'm not saying it isn't a _good_ clone.  They almost got it right.  Just not quite.  Fortunately I'm here.  I know you so well, I can see through their nefarious scheme."

The Doctor rolled his eyes.  "You're being absurd."

"Yeah, course I am.  So.  Out with it."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Fine.  Twenty questions it is.  So - we're here to stop the teething troubles?"

"No."  Almost through grinding teeth he said, "They're historic fact."

Ace tut-tutted.  "So we're here to leave well alone?"

He shot her a glance.  "Our presence is required."

"And how do you know that?"

His expression darkened, as if a cloud had passed behind his eyes.  "Just something I came across in the databanks."

Now they were getting somewhere.  "What kind of something?"

An almost imperceptible shake of his head, and the Doctor was all airy and dismissive once again.  "A reference.  To a bit of legislation."

He didn't explain further.  They shuffled forward with the crowd.  The customs officials - or whatever you called them when they worked a shuttle-port on a new colony rather than an airport back on Earth - were now fully in sight.

Ace was still waiting for a proper explanation.  "Professor," she said in a warning tone.

"Hmm?"

"What reference?"

"Oh.  Yes.  That."  He shot her a brief smile, but the expression looked sort of unnatural, like he'd borrowed a smile from someone else because he couldn't manage one of his own.  "It got me wondering."

"Wondering what?"

"You see, this little piece of legislation will - almost single-handedly - prevent the colony's immediate self-destruction."

"So it's important."

"It's vital.  Not only because the future of Colonis depends on it.  Colonis's success will lead to the establishment of other colonies outside Earth's solar system.  In the next three hundred years humanity will expand across three galaxies, and the trigger that starts it all off is Colonis."  He pinched at the bridge of his nose.  "If Colonis fails, that expansion doesn't get going for another century."

"And it's all thanks to some bureaucrat's report?"  She snorted.  "Typical.  Human beings, dependent on the paperwork to survive."

"Not a report.  A treaty.  A statement of intent.  Humanity has only had to deal with its own internal issues, to date.  Now it has to learn how it must change in order to take its place on a larger stage."

"Okay, treaty equals important.  Got it.  So?"

"So what?"

Ace clenched her fists against her exasperation and growled, "So why is _our_ presence required?  Given that all this is historic fact?"

" _So_..."  The Doctor looked up at the grey, rain-swept sky, and for an instant he looked every single one of his nine hundred and fifty-nine years.  He exhaled slowly through his mouth, almost like he was doing the breathing-exercise that a much younger Ace had once been shown by her GP.  Then the shadows lifted from his expression.  He turned to her and said, "I suppose what struck me the most was the fact that this vital document was entitled 'The Ace McShane Treaty.'"

Ace stared at the Doctor.  Her mouth fell open.  He pretended not to notice for a moment or two, before he added:

"Apparently there's going to be a plateau over to the west named after you, too."

~~~

 

_Day One_  
_1:45 pm_

 

Ahead of them, another colonist had his weapons confiscated by the customs officials.  The armed guards assisting this process were amassing quite a stash.

Ace shifted uncomfortably.

The same sequence was being repeated, over and over.  The settler, now relieved of his armoury, complained that he could not be expected to make a home for his family on a new planet without some means to defend them.  The customs official quoted the colony's relevant statute, albeit with a hint of tired exasperation in his voice.  The statute had placed a temporary embargo on all privately held weaponry.

The settler was assured that all designated residential areas were well-protected by armed enforcers.  He was also told that his confiscated 'property' - which seemed to consist of a programmable shuriken, a classic 9mm in pristine condition, and a wicked-looking vibro-knife - would be returned to him when the embargo had been lifted.

At this point, the settler had three alternatives: to turn around and head back to the passenger liner in orbit, and wait there for months on end until it had been refuelled and repaired such that it might make it back to Earth without falling to bits; to kick up such a violent fuss that he might be arrested and incarcerated (and promptly shipped back to the passenger liner in orbit, _et cetera_ ); to accept the rules as they stood.

Like all the settlers who'd been caught out before him, this one chose option three and, with a grumble, guided his family past the guards.  This tactical withdrawal was interrupted when the customs official's weapon-sweeper chirped again.  The family's progress was halted by the business end of three stun-rifles, and a little boy of eight years or so, who had watched the proceedings with big, serious eyes, was - not ungently - relieved of the disruptor pistol which had been secreted in the curve of his back, under his bulky jacket.

The family moved on, grumbling more vocally.  Ace gave another uncomfortable shuffle and wondered whether there was a way to bypass the official exit to the shuttle-port.  She looked around.  The trouble was the topography.  The port was in a huge crater-shaped hollow which had only one passable section in its surrounding cliffs: the section that had been engineered as the exit point.  Without some kind of cloaking device or jet-pack, there was no way to avoid the guards.

In her ear, the Doctor murmured, "What are you carrying, Ace?"

She flinched away from the sensation of his breath.  "A few small necessities," she murmured back.

"Ace?"  His tone was castigating.

"Give over, Professor, I'm not sixteen any more."

"And yet we are about to walk past that nice uniformed gentleman with his little box of tricks.  The one who seems quite adept at noticing 'small necessities'.  And he doesn't seem to care how old you are."

She grumped a bit longer, but the Doctor's point was valid.  "Stun-gun.  The knife I found on Torvia."  She lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug.  "Couple of marbles of Nine-A."

"Hmm.  And your plan to avoid relinquishing these 'necessities'?" he asked.

She glared at him.  " _I_ didn't know we were going to start things off by going through customs!"

The Doctor sighed a long-suffering sigh.  "Give them here."

She frowned suspiciously.  "What are you going to do with them?  That knife is important.  It's got glynnium worked in with the carbon steel - it'll score diamond!  Best knife I've ever owned."

"I'm going to put them in my pocket," he said.  "I'll give them back."  A beat.  "Eventually."

"Why are they safer in your pocket than mine?"  She waited a second while the Doctor just looked at her, and she realised she'd asked a stupid question.  "Fine.  But you'd better take care of them."

"It's either me or the guard," he pointed out, annoyance creeping in.

Ace glanced around.  Then, with studied nonchalance, she began to decant her various weapons into the Doctor's proffered jacket pocket.  Each item slipped into his clothing without leaving a telltale lump.  Dimensionally transcendental: she was sure of it.

The Doctor didn't huff when her 'couple of marbles' of explosives turned out to mean five small spheres of various sizes and types, some of them requiring an impressive array of stretches, crouches and so forth to retrieve from their hiding places.  When she was done, she glanced at his face.  He was looking up at the makeshift plastic cover that protected them from the drizzle of Colonis's early spring, his expression so carefully blank that he might as well have been tut-tutting.

"My small necessities have saved your backside more than once," she said.

He met her gaze and opened his mouth to make a retort, but was prevented from doing so by another voice.

"They're shielded, right?"

Ace turned, startled, to see a man whose sole conspicuous trait seemed to be his inconspicuousness.  He was just ahead of them in the crowd moving towards customs, and she'd only noticed his back so far.  He was neither old nor young, handsome nor ugly.  He wore neither black nor red.  He would have been a nonentity, except for the fact that he was the only person in the crowd, thus far, to engage them in conversation.

"The pockets," he added in a conspiratorial murmur, when the Doctor and Ace could only stare at him.  "Shielded.  I'm right, aren't I?"

Ace wet her lips and looked to the Doctor for guidance.  The Doctor said, "Something like that, Mr...?"

"I'm Carson.  No last name - I haven't chosen it yet.  They said you can do that here.  Fresh start.  Can I put something in your pocket?"

The Doctor blinked.  Ace wondered whether she should place her body between the Doctor and this Carson weirdo, or just laugh at how absurd the whole conversation sounded.

"Please," Carson said.  "Look, I don't have much.  Didn't think they'd bother about a penknife.  But they're taking everything, and it's the last thing she gave me.  My mum.  I'm not giving it up.  I'll go back up to that rotting hulk of a liner before I part with it."

Carson looked cautiously to each side, checking that the other settlers around them were not interested in their discussion.  Then he fished from his pocket a small metal object.  He turned it over in his hands to show them an engraving.  His expression was pleading.

The Doctor read the engraving, tapping his chin.  "Sophia," he murmured.  He sounded like he was trying to remember all the Sophias he'd ever met.

"You don't look much like a 'Sophia'," Ace said dubiously.

Carson looked at her and frowned.  "Sophia's my mum.  This used to be hers.  Are you going to help me?"

"I don't know."

"Come on!  It's just a penknife.  You stashed half an arsenal in your fella's coat."  Carson's expression grew hard.  "How about this - you'd better help me out, or I'll tell the g-"

"Shut it," Ace said quietly.  Carson paused, like he wasn't used to being spoken to like that.  "I can see you're desperate.  But let's not make this about threats."

Carson swallowed the rest of his sentence, then he nodded.  "You're right.  Sorry.  It's just the thought of coming all this way, only to-"

"Why?" the Doctor said.  He leaned in, both hands on his umbrella handle, looking at the man with characteristic intensity.  "Why is one small penknife so important?  Why sacrifice your fresh start for that?"

Carson stared back for a suspended moment, then he said, "Huh.  I guess you're not close to your family."

Ouch.

Ace glanced down at the penknife that was apparently worth another six-month trip in cryo-sleep.  Carson's thumb was restlessly rubbing the metal over the engraving.  Drawing comfort.  She sized him up: he'd lost everything, including himself, needed to start over and define something new.  This was his anchor.  The only thing that kept him from dissolving into nothingness.

"Give it here," she said.

"Ace-"

"I'm just going to look.  Make sure we aren't accidentally smuggling a plasma-bomb or something."

Carson said, "What's a plasma-bomb?"  But he moved closer and - a bit reluctantly - handed his penknife over to her.

Ace turned it in her hands.  The metal was warm where it had been grasped by Carson, solid and just the right weight.  She glanced up, checking they were unobserved.  Both Carson and the Doctor had formed a barrier with their bodies.  Over Carson's shoulder she saw a guy with long, straggly hair who could have been looking their way, but even as she noticed him he was turning his head as if to talk to a companion.  No one was interested in them.  She looked down at Carson's penknife, balanced it in her palm, then gripped the handle.  Nice.  She could see why he liked it.  She turned her attention to the edge which hid the furled blade.  It didn't have one of those thumbnail depressions to ease it out; it wasn't like the old penknives she remembered from twentieth century Earth.

Carson murmured, "Cover the bottom of the handle with the heel of your hand...that's it.  Now tap the right edge with your thumb.  Twice, tap-tap, quick like that."

Ace did as instructed and the blade eased out with a snick, its edge still trapped inside the handle.  She understood this weapon now; she altered her hold on it and shook her wrist, and the blade flew the rest of the way to lock in position.  It was about ten centimetres long, two centimetres across at the widest point of its curve, and it shone with clinical beauty: small, but perfectly formed.  It had been well cared for.

She looked up at Carson.  "Nice knife."

He exhaled, which made her realise he'd been holding his breath.  "Thank you."

She carefully pressed the blade back into the handle, then passed it to the Doctor.  "It's a penknife," she said.  "Tell me you've got nothing in your pockets like that and I'll have to call you Mr Lying Git from Fibsville."

The Doctor huffed at her, but he took the penknife and popped it in his pocket.  Carson watched it go, nodded once, then stepped back and turned to the guards.  It was almost his turn.  He looked back, caught Ace's eye.  As though unaccustomed to making such a gesture, he reached with one careful hand and touched her shoulder.  "Thank you," he said once again.

She grinned at him.  "I know a thing of beauty when I see it."  She nodded behind him at the guard who was looking their way expectantly.  "Looks like you're up, Boy Scout.  See you on the other side, yeah?"

Carson smiled at her, and the expression made his face change.  Handsome he might not be - not in any traditional sense - but he had an interesting face that was attractive in its own way.  Good eyes and eyebrows, Ace noted.  Then he turned and walked over to the guards, and forty seconds later was handed his documents and allowed to move beyond the customs area.

"You do have a knack for making odd friends," the Doctor murmured.

"Don't worry," Ace said.  She bumped his arm with hers.  "You're still number one among them."

He met her eyes, then, and managed a smile that was a lot more natural than his more recent attempts.  The smile faded into that strange, wary sadness, before he sniffed briskly and said, "Only because I'm carrying all your 'necessities'."

Ace smirked at him, then held out her hand for her ticket.

~~~


	2. Chapter 2

_Settlement Alpha_

_Day One_  
_5:10 pm_

 

According to the Doctor, Colonis had a bright future.  Before the end of the 23rd Century the colony would boast six beautifully designed cities, one on each of its habitable continents.  There'd also be hundreds of smaller communities connected by an ever-developing infrastructure which would include anti-grav shuttles, magnetic trains and even the new transmat technology.

In 2259, however, Colonis could claim only one major settlement and a number of distant campsites.  The settlement itself consisted mainly of prefabricated buildings: shelter for those pioneering souls who were to help transform this green and rather damp land into a beacon of endeavour.

"What's that smell?" Ace asked, wrinkling her nose.  They'd taken a long, train-like transporter with caterpillar-tread wheels from the shuttle-port to the edge of the settlement.  Fifteen kilometres further north, the foundations for Colonis's first city were being laid.

"Pigs," the Doctor said.

"Pigs."

"Pigs!  Animals of the porcine persuasion.  Easiest livestock to transport on a fridge-ship," he said.  "Cattle and sheep don't do nearly as well in cryo-sleep."

"Nice one," Ace said.  "Bacon."

They moved past trundling luggage-transporters, open-sided prefabs dispensing food and drink, makeshift bars made up of little more than upturned trunks and plastic overhead sheets.  People milled, some aimlessly, some frantically.  Everything was chaos.  It was difficult to see further than two metres ahead.

The crowds thinned as they found their way to the residential zone which matched the information on their hand-outs.  "I've been billeted," Ace remarked as she studied the paperwork.  Memories of Phyllis and Jean flickered through her thoughts.  "I feel like an evacuee."

"An evacuee?  No idea where we'll get one, this time on a Wednesday afternoon," the Doctor quipped.

"It's a Wednesday?"

He looked up at the overcast sky.  Colonis seemed to be in a perpetual state of drizzle: not quite rainy enough for the brolly to come out, but damp and cold and uncomfortable against the skin.  "Feels like a Wednesday."  He paused, then he quoted, "'Wednesday's child is full of woe.'"

"Yeah.  Well, I always thought that was stupid - defining someone by the day of the week they happen to get born on.  I mean, doesn't exactly make sense, does it?"  She looked across at the Doctor as they walked, and he grunted vague agreement.  "And if you _are_ going to do something so stupid, why the hell would you put 'woe' in a there?  Monday gets grace, Tuesday gets good-looking, there's some loving and giving thrown in there, but Wednesday?  Woe.  Fucking woe.  I mean, seriously, if you want to screw up a six year old then tell them that their life will be defined by sadness."

He glanced at her.  "Were you born on a Wednesday, Ace?"

"That's got nothing to do with how stupid the rhyme is."

"Of course not.  It's just a rhyme."  He frowned and shook his head, perhaps because the nursery rhyme discussions had become too random and distracting.  Then he noticed a crude signpost driven into the ground at a junction formed by two rough tracks that would need quite some work before they earned the title 'road'.  He pointed with his brolly.  "Down here, I think."

They walked further, until they saw a banner tied over the track between two high poles, just in the distance.  It read: 'Sector 7D.'  Ace peered at the landscape beyond the banner.  It looked pretty much the same as the rest of the settlement.  The mud and plastic and bad light were depressing.

She tried to unburden her own mood.  "So what'll it be?  Nice penthouse apartment with all mod cons, convenient for local amenities?"

"You may jest, Ace, but the Alpha Settlement doesn't offer much in the way of five star accommodation as yet."

"Shame.  I was hoping for some of those little shampoos."

"At the moment we'll do very well to get a roof over our heads and something for dinner."

"Like you don't have a stash of instant noodles in your pockets...hey!  Pockets!  That reminds me-"

"Not a chance," the Doctor growled.  "You can have your dangerous weaponry back later."

"Why not now?"  She made sure she delivered the question pout-free, in spite of the inner-pout she was feeling.  "You gave Carson his penknife back."

The Doctor's eyes narrowed.  "I'm not responsible for Carson."

"What?  So you're responsible for _my_ actions, is that it?  Did I lose my sentience between here and the shuttle-port?"  Ace patted her clothing, pretending to look for it.  "Sentience.  Sentience.  I know I had it yesterday."

The Doctor drew breath to reply, but he refrained from doing so as they walked past a group of black-armband-clad Mourners coming the other way along the track, all of them eyeing the Doctor and Ace suspiciously.  The encounter was limited to staring, then the group had passed them by.

"Know what?  We should get armbands," Ace said.

"That'll make us a target for the reds."

"There's less of them."

"Fewer.  Fewer of them."  He ignored her tut.  "And I'd rather not be a target at all."

Ace considered the Doctor's unusually red-free clothing.  "Yeah, I wondered why you'd ditched the knitwear for the new waistcoat."

The Doctor turned to her and opened one side of his jacket, which was unbuttoned in spite of the drizzle.  "Do you like it?"

Ace studied the patterned waistcoat, with its almost-subtle swirls of gold and green.  "I love it.  Much less hideous."  She smirked at the Doctor's crestfallen look as she damned him with faint praise.  "But it isn't enough.  Everyone keeps looking at your umbrella handle.  Like they can't work out if it means something."

"I still think staying neutral at the moment is our best option."

"Right you are.  I mean, why have one faction out to get us when we can easily get both?"

"As long as they're only looking-"

Ace was getting exasperated.  "That'll last right up till the first beatings get reported.  You think people will go round advertising their colours then?  Everyone'll be a target - trust me."

"We'll just have to keep our eyes open and avoid trouble, then, won't we?"

"Avoiding trouble'll be easier with my dangerous weaponry," Ace pointed out.

The Doctor sighed, guided her over to the nearest prefab wall and leaned in to her, trying to define some privacy for their discussion but coming across as a touch domineering in the process.  "No," he told her, _sotto voce_ , "it will not be easier.  It will be the opposite.  This place...this place is a powder-keg at the moment-"

Ace grinned, though she was faking the humour.  "Nice explosives reference.  Making me nostalgic."

"Ace!"  He closed his eyes briefly.  "Try to think it through.  At the moment, the presence of any armed civilian here means that beatings will quickly become stabbings and shootings-"

"You do realise half the people here have probably already made themselves a shiv?"

"I know that.  The authorities know that.  Hence the current rules.  Being caught in possession of a weapon will have strict consequences, whether or not you've used it.  The administration is much more interested in stopping murders than they are in freedom of expression."

"I know!  I'm not saying I want my knife back so I can wave it around!"

"You're not listening!"  The Doctor actually looked angry.  "If you're caught with a weapon, regardless of the circumstances, you'll be sent back to the ship and there you'll stay."  A grimace flickered over his expression, as though an unhappy thought had occurred, then he shook himself free of whatever it was.  "Don't you understand?  Your absence here might have disastrous consequences for the integrity of the timeline."

Ace frowned.  "Because of this McShane treaty?"

"' _Ace_ McShane,'" he growled.  "Hardly a coincidence.  Ace, this is important.  Until we know what part we - _you_ \- have to play here, I need your word.  Please.  Try not to do anything that will get you expelled from the colony."

"I'm not an idiot!" she protested.

"I know."  He sighed, closed his eyes.  "I know you're not."  He opened his eyes again and looked hard at her.  "I also know that if you walk past a group of reds laying into a Mourner, and you have your stun-gun to hand, you'll use it.  You cannot ignore bullies.  I _know_ you, Ace."

"Fine.  Keep the stunner.  Just give me my knife."

"No."

"Why not?"

The Doctor exploded with a brief noise that sounded a bit like, "Grah!"  Then, more coherently, "Are we really going to have the same conversation all over again?"

Ace knew a surge of outrage and reached for the Doctor's lapels; she wasn't prepared to take this overbearing stuff any more.  She twisted her hands in the fabric, yanked him close and snarled, " _My_ property.  _My_ decisions.  Who the hell do you think you are?"

"The man with the pockets," he said tightly.

She used her grip on his lapels to shake him.  She wasn't sure why she felt so aggressive, but the feeling was undeniable.  "How many times must I say this?  I'm not a child!"

He glanced to the side, managing - with this one small gesture - to point out that she was, in fact, in the process of throwing a very childlike tantrum.  Then he sighed.  "I'm aware," he conceded.

"And you're not my boss!"

"Of course I'm not."

"Or my father!"

A beat.

"I never have been," he said quietly.

Ace let go of his lapels and leaned away.  She was suddenly afraid to be touching him, and she shook the feeling off before it unsettled her.  "You just don't trust me, do you?"

"I trust you with my life," he insisted.  "The problem is, I trust you to protect the lives of everyone else, too.  You can't help yourself."

"Fine, then.  Fine.  So I'm unarmed, for the duration.  I see a bunch of rapists and one lone female, I'll have to help her out with my fists.  Or maybe I'll _be_ the lone female.  One question, though.  Where's your precious treaty gonna be when I get _beaten to death_?"

Their gazes held for a moment, then the Doctor reached for the back of her head.  And though she wanted to resist, tried to resist, he drew her close without apparent effort.  His forehead lowered to nudge her own.  "Ace.  Please.  Not even for the sake of argument."

She was trembling.  She told herself it was anger.  "How am I supposed to protect you when you won't give me the tools to do it?" she whispered.  Because that was the crux of the matter.

The Doctor could have responded by pointing out that Ace's role as his bodyguard had always been imposed rather than something he'd asked for.  But instead he whispered back, "How are you supposed to protect me when a thwarted mugger reports your knife to a guard and you're shipped back to the liner?"

The trembling eased.  Ace closed her eyes and allowed herself to relax, just for a moment.

Then she said, "Give me a marble of Nine-A."  But when she opened her eyes and pulled back, ready to shoot the Doctor her sternest look, he was already holding her homemade explosive out to her.

"Be careful," he said.

"Always am."

And that, it seemed, was the end of the discussion.

They wandered further along the track, and came to another junction with a path just below the 'Sector 7D' banner.  A female guard in uniform was stationed there, checking paperwork and then allowing certain people past.  Prefabs crowded the path on either side.

The Doctor showed his hand-out, Ace showed hers, and they stood for a while listening to the light rain on the plastic tarpaulin over the guard's station as she searched for their names on her data-tablet.  After a frustrating couple of minutes the guard said, "McShane with an 'a'?"

"Yes," Ace said, thinking that it was one of the more stupid questions she'd ever been asked.

"You're not on the list."

The Doctor sighed lightly and then said, "But only one of them."

"What?"

"One 'a'.  McShane.  M-C-S-H-A-N-E."

"Oh."  The guard glared.  "You said M-A-C."

"Did not," Ace said.

"You said-"

"Just a misunderstanding," the Doctor said.  "If you could-"

"Hold up.  McShane - here we are."  The guard scanned her tablet.  " _Doctor_ McShane?"

Ace drew breath to deny this assertion, but noticed the Doctor casting a surreptitious glance at his paperwork.  She held her tongue, and the Doctor nodded.  "That's right."  Ace shot him a surprised glance, but he wasn't looking her way to see it.

And in an instant the guard's demeanour was less abrupt.  "You're going to be busy," she said.  "An actual educated man, in amongst the builders and farm labourers."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that building or farming are without-"

"Yeah, yeah, everybody matters.  Everybody contributes.  I've seen the same promo-clips you have.  Thing is - yesterday we were a population of about fifteen hundred, with twenty-seven medical professionals.  Today we're over forty thousand.  And our medical staff has increased by seventeen.  You're one of them."

"I'm not here to work in the medical facility."

"I know.  Says here 'scientific adviser'.  Lists your fields of expertise."  The guard blinked at her data-tablet.  "Alien cultures?  Oh, very useful!"  Sarcasm was alive and well in 2259.  "But you're medically qualified, right?"

"Oh, he's qualified," said Ace.  "Pretty much every way you look."  She was quite pleased by the way she made her compliment sound like an insult.

The guard nodded.  "It's just good to know.  This is my patch."  She glanced around for a moment, noting the comings and goings, the narrow-eyed looks and clenched fists; she was like a snake, flicking out its tongue to sense the tensions in the air.  "At least now I've got someone who can dress injuries."

"I can certainly do that," the Doctor agreed.  "And you are...?"

"Celic.  Ana Celic, Enforcer 2nd Grade."

"A pleasure to meet you, Ana."

She grunted in reply and hit one more spot on her data-tablet.  The device spat out something that looked like the tiniest floppy disk Ace had ever seen.  The enforcer slotted it into a plastic holder that looked vaguely key-shaped.  She handed the key over, already turning her attention to the people who were arriving behind them.

And with that, they were waved beyond the checkpoint and into the pathway between prefabs.  They moved past bland, characterless walls, distinguishable only by the not-very-handy six-digit figure inscribed on each door.  There were very few people wandering between cabins; Ace could only assume that those who had already arrived were either trying to settle in or just zonked out.

She glanced back, checking their retreat.  She was virtually unarmed but that didn't render her incompetent.  The enforcer was now talking to a tall woman with a crew cut who held a girl of about ten or eleven by the hand.  The kid was sullen and did not appreciate the hand-holding, but couldn't twist away.  Beyond them, a guy with dark, haunted eyes and long hair that was straggly in the rain seemed to be looking past the checkpoint, watching the path where Ace and the Doctor walked.  Ace turned to face forward, discomfited by the idea that she'd seen this face before, then turned back.  The man was looking in a different direction now.  Ace shook off her paranoia.  Blokes with long hair weren't exactly a rarity on this burgeoning colony.  Half the men here seemed to be auditioning for The Levellers.  Crusty-central.

"So," she said.  "'Dr McShane,' I presume."

"Yes, for now."

"Welcome to the family."

"Thank you," he said shortly.

She huffed.  "Suppose it makes a change from me being 'Miss Smith.'"

"Hmm."

"Or Liz Shaw.  Or another of your cast-offs.  Got to tell you, though.  Getting a bit sick of being your ever-loving daughter."

The Doctor shot her a look that she noted only from the corner of her eye, because she'd made sure her gaze was fixed dead ahead.  "Noted," he said.  "And my former companions are not 'cast-offs' - I'll thank you not to describe them as such."

"Whatever.  So - next time?  I want to be a colleague, okay?  No.  I'll be your minder.  No.  Your boss.  Yeah, next time I'm the boss and you're my underling, all right?  And you don't get to pinch my name."

The Doctor tut-tutted.  "You become obstreperous when denied weaponry, Ace."

"No.  Next time I want to be queen of the entire universe," she said.

They stopped walking for a moment, looked at each other, then both of them snorted into giggles.  The Doctor reached to nudge her nose, looking indulgent, almost sentimental.  Ace figured he regretted their recent argument as much as she did.

They found their cabin.  It was small.  Ace hoped it wouldn't be bunk beds again; in the last two years she'd grown out of the notion that a very narrow bed with a ladder was a fun idea.

Inside the front door was a tiny hall space that had three doors leading off it.  There was a rack for shoes provided, and some disposable slippers: the colony was anticipating a muddy existence for quite some time.  Ace ignored the slippers and opened the door to her left.  It was a kitchen, barely big enough for two people to stand in without touching.  At least there was clean water, she noted.  She closed the door and tried the next one.  Bathroom.  Well, loo and shower.  Ace made a mental note to keep her elbows tucked in when she washed her hair.

She closed that door and turned to the last one.  The Doctor had already cracked it open and was peering inside.

Bedroom.  The biggest room in the cabin.  Ace could see the edge of a table and two chairs set underneath the plastiglass window.  Bedroom and living space, then.  She ducked her head under the Doctor's outstretched arm so she could take in the rest of their accommodations.

She blinked.  "Oh," she said.

It wasn't bunk beds.

"Um, Professor?" she said quietly.

"Hmm?"

It felt like the universe was laughing at her.  "So has human society in the twenty-third century developed some interesting ideas regarding incest?"

"No.  No, those attitudes remain as they always have."

"Not father and daughter, then."

"It seems not."  He sighed.  "Look - it's just a cover-story.  We won't even be here that much."

Ace glared at the double bed which took up most of the space against the back wall.  Her notebook remained hidden in her quarters on the TARDIS, but it seemed she'd have some updating to do when she got home because a double bed in a tiny cabin _definitely_ deserved a check in the 'forced proximity' column.  Come to think of it, their earlier argument also deserved a mark in column two...damn it, at this rate she was going to end up having another erotic dream.  And since she'd be doing that while sleeping in this double bed, with the Doctor close enough to hear her quickened breath and watch her squirm, it was looking like her time here on Colonis would be best spent mainlining caffeine or maybe finding a job with a nightshift.

There was an uncomfortable moment of silence as they both examined the room.

The Doctor cleared his throat.  "Shall we go for a walk?"

"Yeah," she replied, before he'd barely got the full sentence out.

~~~

 

_Caves beneath the western plateau_

_Day One_  
_7:50 pm_

 

Adventures, Ace had learned, came in all shapes and sizes.  Including very uncomfortable ones.

She and the Doctor were currently trapped in a giant insect's cocoon or sac or pouch (the correct terminology escaped her in that moment).  The cocoon was suspended from the ceiling of a dimly-lit cave.  It swung alarmingly at the slightest movement.

She should have learned by now that when the Doctor said, "Let's go for a walk," what he really meant was, "Let's go and hurl ourselves headlong into unimaginable danger."

Captured by the monsters.  Typical.

Roughly three minutes had gone by since their latest attempt to change their relative positions.  The attempt had borne nothing more fruitful than a slew of expletives: Ace's typically Anglo-Saxon, the Doctor's in a language that the distant TARDIS did not deem worthy of translation.

"Ace," the Doctor said, "I hesitate to press the point, but your boot is not doing my throat any good."

This was the problem with being smushed up in a giant insect cocoon.  Not so much the tangle of limbs, nor the inability to rearrange positions, nor even the prospect of becoming a monster's dinner.  It was the way someone else's constant bloody complaining was inescapable.

"I'm not," she growled, "doing it on purpose."

"Understood," the Doctor replied.  His voice sounded very strained.  "Unfortunately you've limited my airways to the extent that I can either go into res...respiratory bypass or just lose...conscious...ness."

Oh.  Shit.  Right now there was only one thing worse than his constant complaining, and that was the notion of losing his nice, reassuring, constant complaining.

Ace tried bending her knee.  Their precarious tangle shifted.

"Otherlegactually," the Doctor gasped.

"Sorry."  She adjusted her other knee.  Pulling it away from where it had been braced made her whole body roll with a queasy absence of control.  The insect cocoon (or whatever the hell it was called) had an elastic quality to its outer containment.  This had left her unable to punch, kick or tear her way through.  It also meant that they had no firm surfaces against which to orient themselves.  Their current situation was, effectively, that of two people dropped inside a large draw-string bag suspended from the ceiling: a bag made of semi-translucent Spandex.

The Doctor gave a relieved groan followed by a grateful inhaling sound.  Ace was still rolling.  Without the steadying brace of the Doctor's throat, her body was tipping and turning as it tried to find a new place of equilibrium.  At such moments there was only one thing to do: Ace made a noise normally associated with fairground rides and held on to her stomach.  Her leg was trying to pass over her head, tipping her into a backwards roll.  This was forcing something hard and uncomfortable against her back, just at kidney-height.  If encouraged to guess, she'd have said it was the Doctor's shoe.

"Fuck's sake!" she complained, instinct making her want to reach out and grab at something, intellect telling her there was nothing to grab that wouldn't start tipping right along with her.

Her right leg was prevented from completing the backwards roll.  Somehow the Doctor had managed to hook it and haul it back.  With a grunt, he tugged her leg into a bracing position that was hopefully more acceptable than boot-in-throat.  This motion required him to find some counter-levering force via his own right arm, which was set against her abdomen.  They managed to settle again, Ace with a strong suspicion that her right ankle was now propped over the Doctor's shoulder with his left arm clamping it against him.  The cost of this new equilibrium was a sharp pain as her belly was pressed by a bony elbow.

"Ow!" she complained.

"Yes, yes, I know.  Of course, if you didn't wear such ridiculous footwear then this wouldn't be an issue."  Still, the pressure at her stomach shifted.

"That's your problem with our current situation?" Ace asked incredulously.  "My sodding boots?"

"Steel toe-caps," he grumbled.  "Moccasins would have been much more suitable."

"And would you have said that if I'd managed to kick us a hole in this thing with my nasty big boots?"

"It's an issue of physics," the Doctor said primly.  "Force exerted against surface area.  Now if you'd been wearing stiletto heels-"

"Right.  Next time we head out into the planetary wilds I'll remember my evening wear."

"Don't be testy."

"What the hell should I be?  I'm about to get eaten by a giant wasp!  What's the correct attitude in this situation?  Intellectual interest?  Will you give me mild disconcertion?"

"Ace-"

"And you'll note that I haven't even mentioned the other thing!  The thing I am one hundred per cent allowed to be pissed off about!"

"Oh, yes, that's going to help, isn't it?" the Doctor snapped.  "Berating me for-"

"You took your jacket off, you complete and utter moron!" Ace yelled into the cramped, dim confines of the cocoon.  "'Here, hold this,' you said to me.  'Back in two ticks,' you said.  And off you went, exploring the tiniest tunnel you could find-"

"There was papery residue!"

"Oh great.  Papery residue.  Leading straight to the maternity ward of the insect lair.  Not a place the giant wasps would have _any_ problem with intruders stomping about, right?"

"They are called the Irrizor."

"Excellent.  Thanks for that.  Always nice to get the name right when my insides are being dissolved and sucked up a giant proboscis!"

"Yes, fine, I'm sorry!  I took my jacket off because the tunnel was small."

"And you came out of it face to face with a severely pissed-off Irrizor."

"Irrizor is the collective name - they don't recognise individuals beyond their func-"

"Seriously?  You're going to lecture me on hive culture rather than own up to the fact that the one tool I have that might cut us out of here and save our lives is sitting in the _stupid_ bloody pocket of your _stupid_ bloody jacket, well out of reach on the other side of this stupid bloody cavern!"

"I know!"

"And why is my knife over there, rather than in my ankle sheath, all nice and discreet and yet accessible-when-required?  It's because you, Dr Sodding McShane, are an overbearing control-freak who doesn't trust anyone in the universe other than himself!"

She'd yelled herself out.  She caught her breath.  It was, she finally took the time to acknowledge, very weird to be arguing with someone who was holding your right ankle against their shoulder.

The Doctor muttered something about how Ace was greatly exaggerating the number of people in the universe he trusted.

"What?" she demanded.

He changed tack.  "It should never have come to this!"

"Right.  'We'll go and introduce ourselves to the natives,' you said.  'We'll talk to them.  Conflicts like this, people always miss the obvious,' you said.  So we come striding in here, all 'Hail Hive-Mind, well met!'  And you know what?"  She waited a beat.  "No bloody ears!"

"I wasn't to know they rely on mental communication!"

"They're a hive mind!"

"I've known plenty of gestalt entities perfectly capable of talking to other species."

"But they were mainly telepathic too, right?"

"Well, yes-"

"So why didn't you use telepathy?  You're the one with the big oogly alien mind."

"Time Lords are touch-telepaths."  He sighed.  "You think I didn't try?"

"No," Ace said, enjoying the cruelty of what she was about to say.  "I think you failed.  I think you overestimated your abilities, and you got us dumped in here waiting to get turned into soup.  And you managed to do it while denying me the knife that might have saved us.  And now you're trying to blame it all on my footwear."  She huffed.  "Tosser."

"Well that's very helpful."  The Doctor sniffed.

"Soup!"

"Going from the anatomy, it's more likely that th-"

"Don't you _dare_ tell me how we're about to get eaten, you cretin!  God!  Arrogant, useless-"

"Fine!" the Doctor yelled back.  While Ace had been shouting into the crook of the Doctor's knee, his own breath was warm against her right shin.  "Is this what we're going to do for the rest of the night?  Shout insults at each other?"

"You blamed my boots!"  She tut-tutted.  "Well, where's your precious 'Ace McShane Treaty' now, eh?  I tell you, if this screws up the timeline I want it down in writing - _your_ fault."

"All right then!  I miscalculated!  Is that what you want to hear?"

There was silence for a moment.  The shouting had left them both breathing hard.  And even after running away from the prospect of the double bed in their cabin, it seemed Ace still had a mark to make in her 'forced proximity' column...if, of course, she managed somehow to survive this encounter and make it back to the TARDIS and her notebook.  One thing was for certain, though.  Forced proximity did not inevitably lead to sexy-feelings.  She had probably never been less turned on.

Ace gave a sigh.  "No," she said, making her tone more measured.  "That's not what I want to hear."

"Ah," the Doctor said.  "So what, er, do you want?"

"What I want is for you to tell me you've done something clever.  Maybe using your link to the TARDIS?  And you've opened the lines of communication and you're currently explaining to the Hive that this is all a big misunderstanding.  We weren't trying to harm their babies.  We're actually here to help.  And now they're on their way to let us out of the larder."

"I wish I could tell you that.  Believe me."  The Doctor sighed too, but his came out a bit shaken.  "Don't think I've given up trying."

"Yes, you're very trying."

"Oh, try to contain your wit, Ace."

"Unfortunately it's the only thing I have on me that's sharp."  She heard the Doctor's huff, and interpreted it as a weary attempt at laughter.  "I should never have ditched my old jacket, should I?  All those badges?  Pins and metal edges?"

"I think we'd have struggled to cut our way out of this with a Blue Peter badge."

"Just clutching at straws."

"Actually that's my left foot you're clutching."

"It was digging in my back."

"Shall we have an argument about how inappropriate my brogues are?"

Ace groaned.  "God, let's not."

"Fine.  What shall we talk about?"

She considered.  "About how facing a messy and painful death by insect-proboscis can lead to fraying of temper.  I'm sorry I called you a tosser."

"That's all right."

There was a pause.

Ace said, "This is where you say sorry you blamed my boots."

"Oh.  Yes.  Nothing wrong with those boots.  Very sturdy and sensible."

"Damn right."  She wrinkled her nose.  "I'd suggest we hug and make up, but, you know..."

"Relative movement is an issue."

"Yeah."

"Can't even shake hands."

"I'll shake your foot."  She did just that.

The Doctor gave another weary laugh.  "Oh, Ace."

"One day we'll laugh about this."  God, she hoped that one day they'd be able to laugh about it.

"No doubt," he said.  He didn't sound confident.

So when, perhaps twenty minutes later, a voice penetrated the gloom of the cavern and said, "Ace?" and she peered out to see the haziest suggestion of movement against the light given off by the algae-torches used by the Irrizor, they were both of them surprised.

~~~

 

_Western foothills_

_Day One_  
_8:45 pm_

 

"So what the hell were you doing out here, anyway?" Ace asked Carson half an hour later, once they'd cleared the Irrizor tunnels and were walking in the direction of the settlement.

"I followed you," he said simply.

Which would have been creepy, had it not been so insanely lucky.  "Oh," she said.  "Why?"

"Curiosity," he said.  "I came to find you at the settlement.  I was going to offer to buy you both a drink, since you helped me out of a tricky spot.  I saw you leaving your sector.  I went to catch up, but then I saw you head out of the settlement.  Couldn't work out what you were up to, where you were going.  I got curious.  So I followed."

The evening was growing late and they were walking through darkness.  Any available moonlight was smothered by rainclouds, which made their walk more of a stumble as tufts of grass and the undulating topography caught them out.  The drizzle still fell.  The terrain was unfamiliar.  And of course, at least two of their party were listening out with more than half an ear for the sound of pursuing angry giant insects.

Ace could only find it in herself to sigh and say to Carson, "Well, three cheers for your curiosity.  We were nearly soup back there."  Some distance away, where the Doctor walked, she heard an irritated tut-tut.  She ignored it.

It took the better part of two hours to walk back to the lights of the settlement.  No pursuit was launched from the Irrizor caves.  Ace distracted herself from the various tensions of the day by chatting with Carson.  It wasn't like she had any other options, since the Doctor had wrapped himself in a sullen kind of introspection ever since Carson had used his penknife to carefully slice open the cocoon and they'd spilled out on to the cave floor.  The Doctor had picked himself up, tried to brush off the sticky fibres of the cocoon without much success, and gone to retrieve his discarded jacket.  He'd left it to Ace to offer Carson their sincere thanks, and he'd barely spoken in all the time since.

As they reached the safety of the Alpha Settlement, Carson invited Ace for the drink he'd originally intended to offer.  She was tempted, mainly because the Doctor was in such a mood, but decided against.  Better to get back to the cabin and at least get clean.

"Rain check?" she suggested to Carson.

"Um...?"

She grinned.  "Some other time."

"Oh!  Yes.  Definitely.  I'm in sector 4A if you need to find me."

"We'll be seeing each other around, I should think," she said.  "Night, then.  Thanks again for the rescue."

At the cabin, as soon as they were behind closed doors, the Doctor emptied his pockets of those items belonging to Ace.  He lined them up on the table without a word or a look, then he sat down on one of the chairs.

"Professor?" she asked, because by this point she damn well needed him to say something.

"Go to bed," he said.  "I need to do some thinking."

"Oh yeah?  Big all-powerful Time Lord plan not working out like you'd hoped?"

She meant it as a tease.  Well, a tease with a bit of bite, but she thought he deserved that after his moodiness of the day, not to mention his ridiculous footwear-criticisms.  But the Doctor didn't laugh, or smile, or tut-tut at her.  His gaze met hers and, for an unsettling moment, she was reminded that this was a man whom entire alien species feared.

He looked away again, folded in on himself, hands tucked under his chin.  "Go to bed," he repeated.

Ace rolled her eyes at the back of his head, and disappeared into the shower room.

~~~


	3. Chapter 3

_Settlement Alpha_

_Day Two_  
_7:15 am_

 

Ace stirred slowly, and her first thought was one of surprise.  It seemed that she had actually fallen asleep.  Astonishing.  She'd been so sure she'd spend the whole night waiting in vain for slumber to calm her racing mind.

Colonis had offered plenty of incident so far: a near-death experience in a giant-insect lair, followed by a rescue courtesy of some random bloke they'd met.  It was all very serendipitous.  They'd survived the experience thanks to the very same penknife they'd helped Carson smuggle into the colony.  Perhaps it had all worked out the way the fates had intended.  Or maybe it was less about fate and more that the Doctor was quite right about the benefits of giving the TARDIS her head.

And now Ace could sense the daylight filtering through the blind over the plastiglass window, and she shifted in bed as her thoughts began to speed with waking.  "Professor?" she muttered, trying to open her eyes but finding it necessary to squint against the light.  She blinked.  There was no reply.  She hauled herself up to a sitting position and rubbed her face.

When she could take in the room, she saw she was alone.  She shrugged, rolled out of bed and looked in distaste at the clothing she'd shed last night.  No rucksack meant no clean undies.  And of course, one of the more overlooked problems associated with an evening spent crawling through tunnels in a giant-insect lair was that it didn't do your outer clothing much good.  Ace held up her jeans.  They were torn at the knee, and half of one back pocket was now more a back flap.  Dirt had been ground into the denim.  There were tacky fibres stuck here and there: insect secretions.  Yuck.  She laid her jeans aside.

Okay, so this was a new colony and it was currently filling up with people who hadn't been allowed hand luggage on the shuttle down here.  So wouldn't it make sense to provide everyday essentials?  She began to open the cupboards and drawers fitted around the furniture in the cabin.

Bingo.

Stacked within the drawers under the bed were basic clean garments: plain underwear, T-shirts, coveralls in navy blue that, with a flash of memory, conjured the image of the boiler-suits Frank-the-plumber always wore, back when Ace would watch him load and unload his van across the street.  None of it was exactly the height of fashion, but it was clean and practical enough.  A good amount of pockets, too, for those who liked to carry with them a few small necessities...which reminded her.  Ace checked on her own modest arsenal.  Her stun-gun, knife and the spheres of Nine-A were still on the table where the Doctor had placed them.

Ace got dressed, thinking that if everyone else was choosing their wardrobe as she was this morning, Colonis would soon bear more than a passing resemblance to a stalk-n-slash horror film convention.  Especially if people decided to start accessorising with hockey masks.

She checked the rest of the cabin and found the other rooms lacking a crumpled and probably grumpy Time Lord.  After availing herself of what facilities there were with a view to making herself feel more human, she opened the main door and looked outside at the Colonis morning.

It had stopped raining; that was a plus.  In the sky above there were still more clouds than there were cloudless patches of indigo-tinged blue, but it was a definite improvement on the grey of yesterday.  Voices drew Ace's attention and she looked down the pathway to her right.  A crowd of people were gathered, their attention focused on one of the prefabs.  She frowned at the presence of several enforcer uniforms.

Had it happened already?  Had the threat of violence erupted into actual bodily harm?

The female enforcer who had issued them with their key yesterday - the one who'd had such trouble spelling 'McShane' - hurried past, away from the gathered crowd, heading for her checkpoint at the junction with the main track.

"Oy," Ace called, "what's going on?"

The enforcer hesitated.  "You should ask your husband.  He's over there."  Then she went on her way.

Ace arched her brows.  "My husband," she muttered to herself.  Being married to that?  Recipe for disaster.

She ducked back into the main room of the cabin.  The little electronic key was sitting on the table.  She snatched it up then let herself out.

The path had been strewn with chipped stones to make the mud underfoot less treacherous, but Ace still had to watch her step.  She walked towards the gathered crowd of uniforms.  Behind her she heard shouting.  When she glanced over her shoulder she noted ructions by the checkpoint at the junction with the main track.  The female enforcer, along with several colleagues, was trying to marshal another crowd of people in order to prevent them from surging down the pathway.  Angry questions were being shouted.

"Oh, this isn't good," she said.  She quickened her steps.  Ahead of her, two uniforms parted to allow her a glimpse of a guy in white plastic coveralls who was beckoning with his arms.  She stopped on the periphery of the group, and then had to step back hurriedly as an anti-grav gurney was manoeuvred out of the cabin.

On the gurney was a black body-bag.  In the body-bag there was obviously a body.  Behind the gurney, the Doctor - in his normal clothing except for the plastic overshoes he'd put on - appeared with a grey look on his face.

"Excuse me, ma'am - you should get back inside."

Ace turned to see that one of the uniforms was addressing her.  She wondered when she'd gone from being a 'miss' to a 'ma'am', and whether - at twenty years of age - she should be offended.

"She's with me," the Doctor's voice called out.

"Oh," said the uniform.  "Apologies, Doctor.  I didn't realise you'd brought an assistant."

"Not an assistant," Ace grumbled.

The enforcer frowned.  The Doctor sent her an exasperated look, then he coughed and said, "My, er, wife.  Ace.  Also very qualified to _assist_."  He waved her forward before she could think of a retort, and Ace found herself standing beside the gurney, in the company of the Doctor and the guy in the white coveralls.  "Ace, this is Dr Bala, the medical examiner-"

"Acting," Dr Bala said.  "I'm just a doctor, really.  Hello, Ace."

"Hi.  So what's going on?"

The Doctor glanced at the uniforms, then reached to unzip the body-bag.  Ace swallowed and lifted her chin, trying to remember professionalism.  She'd seen dead bodies before.  And it made sense that after four years together the Doctor no longer tried to shield her from the tragedies they encountered, although there was a buried part of her that remembered with fondness the time when he'd tell her to stay back and not to look.  Still, she kept insisting she wasn't sixteen any more.  She couldn't have it both ways.

The body-bag parted to reveal the bloodied face of a woman with a crew cut.

Ace frowned.  "She was behind us.  When we arrived, yesterday."  She leaned closer.  "I'm guessing we're not talking natural causes."

"Not even close," the Doctor said.  Though he spoke quietly, the words contained the rumble of thunder.

"So what time did she die?"  Because they always asked that in the thrillers.

"Probably around eight pm yesterday," replied Dr Bala, after double-checking the read-outs on the medical scanner he carried.

Eight o'clock yesterday evening.  About the same time Ace and the Doctor had been arguing themselves breathless in an insect cocoon several kilometres away.  Ace felt angry.  They should have stayed within the settlement.  Never mind getting freaked out by the sleeping arrangements, they should have stayed right here, because they could have done more good if they had.  They might have been able to stop a murder.

"Shit," she said.  She hated not being able to save people.  Then she frowned at the dead woman's face.  "Where's the blood from?  I don't see any cuts."

"Multiple lacerations over the thighs," Dr Bala said.  "Most of them shallow.  She was left to bleed out.  You don't normally see that outside combat zones.  Or suicides, of course."

"But you don't think this was a suicide?" Ace prompted.  She'd heard that some suicides made little cuts before the big, life-finishing one, like they were practising or steeling themselves or something.

Dr Bala glanced back at the cabin door and scowled.  "She was secured to the pipework underneath her bathroom basin with cable-ties.  There's evidence she spent some time trying to get free.  Unsuccessfully.  That's where the blood on her face is from."

Ace swallowed hard as she imagined this woman, weakened by her injuries, still trying to pull and twist and maybe even chew her way free of her bonds, as she writhed on the cold floor in an ever-spreading pool of her own blood.  She looked up to see the Doctor studying her, something unhappy and helpless in his expression.  Of course, he hated not being able to save people just as much as she did.

The Doctor zipped the body-bag up.  "Did you notice anything about her yesterday?" he asked.  "Any small detail might help.  We don't even have a name yet."

"What?  How come?"

"The computer system failed.  Yesterday.  Too much traffic.  All the local data is on the enforcer's device.  She's gone to get it.  Ana Celic - you remember her."

"Yeah, I just saw her."  Ace considered the body-bag.  "This woman - was she a Mourner?"

"No evidence of any political affiliation."

She blew out her cheeks.  "Cutting up a woman's thighs - that isn't about a difference of opinion, though, is it?  That's predatory."  She grimaced.  "Sexual."

"My thoughts, too," Dr Bala said.

Suddenly, Ace's earlier notion about a colony of boiler-suit-clad people that looked like they were paying homage to Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees seemed entirely misplaced.

"Wait!"  Ace thought back to their arrival the previous day.  "I remember.  Shit!"  She looked around, feeling a sense of rising panic. "Where's the kid?"

"What kid?" asked Dr Bala.

"When she arrived, yesterday, she had a kid.  Holding her hand.  A girl, about ten.  The kid isn't inside?"

The Doctor shook his head.  "No sign."

Bala let out a little growl of annoyance that seemed to be directed at himself.  "Twin beds.  Should have realised."

"So either the killer took the kid away, or she scarpered," Ace said, turning her attention to the nearby uniforms, expecting them to take this rather pertinent information and run with it.

They looked pale and unprepared.  She remembered that this whole colonial experiment was, at heart, driven by business principles which tended to award contracts to the lowest bidder rather than the most qualified.

"Oh, come on, people!" she exploded.  "We've got to find this kid!"  She looked at the Doctor.  "Go and do your thing.  Get the clues to nail this bastard.  We'll catch up after, right?"  He hesitated a moment, looked at the body-bag, then he lifted his chin and nodded.  She turned to the nearest enforcer: the one who'd tried to make her go back to her cabin.  "You.  With me.  Now."

Without looking to see if he was following her, she turned to race back to the junction.  At the checkpoint, Enforcer Celic was biting her lip as she studied her data-tablet.  Beyond her a crowd of onlookers were only adding to the tension in the air.

"Celic, right?" Ace asked.

The enforcer looked up, irritated.  She opened her mouth, probably to order Ace back to her cabin, but the other uniform - the one who'd followed Ace down the path - stepped in.  "You should listen to her," he said.  "She's with the Doctor."

"McShane.  I remember."  Celic sighed, then tried to show Ace the data-tablet.

"I know," Ace said.  "There's a kid."

"Eleven year old female.  Doriel Schacht.  The mother was, er, Silja.  The kid's not there?  Maybe hiding?"

"Where?  Behind the shoe rack?"  Ace shook her head.  "Nowhere to hide.  We need to find her.  Especially if she's been taken by some psycho."

"She wasn't-"

"Death to the rapists of Earth!" screamed a female voice in the crowd.

"You want rape?  I got rape for you, lady, right here!"

The crowd surged, but only together.  A few braver enforcers waded in and began to separate scuffles.  Ace rolled her eyes and turned back to Celic.

Celic was biting at her lip again.  "The girl," she said, raising her voice to be heard over the hubbub of the crowd.  "I saw her.  And the footage confirms it.  She came tearing down the path and sped off, early yesterday evening, about six.  I shouted at her.  Not to run, you know?  She'd end up hurting herself."  Celic raised a hand to her mouth.  "Her mother was getting murdered and I just stood here!"

"Not at six.  Too early," Ace said.  "No, eleven year old girl, all petulance and hormones?  Most likely running off after a spat.  Take it you didn't see her come back?"

Celic shook her head.  "So where is she now?"

"That's the question.  When did you go off duty?"

"Shift change was eight o'clock.  Bacca replaced me.  He's asleep right now."

Ace considered.  "Okay, back up a minute.  You've got camera footage of this path?"

"Of course.  All the residential blocks have it."  Celic shrugged.  "Cameras are cheap and easy, and we've been expecting trouble."

"Good - so we know who came and went yesterday evening?"

"Yes."

"And you didn't see anyone you didn't recognise go down there?"

"No one I hadn't already processed.  Can't speak for Bacca."

"Would he have stopped someone who didn't belong?"

"That's the rule.  All family units get extra security."

"But yesterday was the first day most of us were here.  How does that work?  How did Bacca know who belonged and who didn't?"

Celic hesitated, then said, as if to the slow kid in the class, "Once you're checked in, the facial recognition software does most of the work."  She pointed to the camera mounted above the nearest prefabs, just beyond her checkpoint.  "You can't walk past that without triggering alarms.  Not unless you're registered in the system."

"Okay."  Ace nodded; it seemed reasonable to assume that cameras and software were a lot cleverer in 2259 than they'd been in 1986.  "And what's at the end of the path?"

"Dead end.  Prefabs are built up to the back wall of the canteen building, one block over."

"So the killer probably comes from this residential block.  No one else would be able to get in."

Celic nodded.  "That's right."

"Shit."  Ace grimaced.  "You probably shouldn't be talking to me, then.  I'm a suspect."

The enforcer broke into a grin.  "You're one of the few who isn't.  I saw you and your husband leave yesterday, remember?  About half five, wasn't it?  I know you weren't back by the time I clocked off."

"Yeah, we were, um, pretty late back.  Okay, let's focus on the kid.  Option one - she never came back.  Option two - she came back late on."  Ace made a face.  "Which would mean the kid had to deal with walking in on her mother's corpse."  She sighed.  "Definitely enough to send a scared eleven year old running for the hills.  But either way, she's probably hiding."

"Right.  Right.  I need to..."  Celic looked around.  Her colleagues had formed a barrier which protected the pathway, but all bets would be off the moment the gurney containing Silja Schacht's remains came into view.  On the other side of the enforcers the crowd was still yelling insults and throwing the odd punch.  Someone was being marched off in the protection of two friends as blood poured from his nose.  "Look, I'm supposed to wait for..."  Celic shook her head.  "Fuck it.  I need to make an announcement.  Best way to find this kid is to make sure everyone's on the look-out for her."

"Agreed."  Ace's eye was caught by a familiar face on the edge of the crowd.  "Hey, Boy Scout!"  Carson noticed her and gave her a wave, his expression concerned.  "Oy, let that bloke through, okay?"  Carson managed to shoulder through the gap created by two armed enforcers and strode up to her.  "Right then.  Celic, grab that table from your checkpoint there.  Carson - good morning."

"Morning."  He frowned.  "I, er, thought I'd come and see if you and the Doctor wanted to find some breakfast."

"Lovely idea.  Bit busy right now.  Think you could do me a favour and stop me from falling off a table?"

"Um, okay."

Celic dragged the table behind the row of uniforms, who had linked arms in order to prevent the increasingly restless crowd from surging.  She watched as Ace hopped up on this less-than-sturdy platform.

"Oy!" Ace yelled at the crowd.  "Pay attention!"  Her words were lost in the shouted voices.  Ace clenched her fists in frustration, but Celic unclipped a small electronic device from her collar and handed it up.  "Amplifier," she explained.  "It's for crowd control.  Like I said, we've been set for trouble.  Hold the top button and speak, it'll broadcast to the crystals mounted locally."

Ace steadied herself on the table as it shifted in the mud.  Carson's shoulder gave her something to lean on.  The crowd beyond the uniforms grew less restless as it noticed her and waited to see what would happen.

She hit the top button.  "Good morning Alpha Settlement," she said into the device.  The crystal loudspeakers conveyed her words clearly and without the whine of feedback that she'd expected.  "A moment of your time, please."

Disconcertingly, the crowd grew quiet.  Ace swallowed.  She'd just remembered that she didn't like being the centre of attention, and the mortifying memory of the moment in the school nativity play when she'd started the second verse of 'Away in a Manger' four bars too early, on her own, was horribly close.  She shook it off.

"If you'd kindly stop punching each other for a minute," Ace said, "I need some help."

Someone close by yelled, "Who the hell are you?"

"My name's Ace.  Who are you?"  Ace smirked as the 'someone' muttered something and turned away, into the crowd.  "Fine.  Introductions are done.  Now, here's the situation.  There's a young girl who's in some trouble."

"Tell her sheaths are free!" some wag yelled.

"Oh, and we have a comedian, ladies and gentlemen," Ace sneered.  "Because what could be funnier than making jokes about a child whose _mother just fucking died_!"

The wag did not see fit to reply.  Ace sighed hard.

"So this is the situation," she went on.  "This girl is missing.  She's eleven years old, she's lost her mum, and she's on her own.  Scared.  Traumatised.  And, like the rest of us, she's a long way from anything familiar.  She doesn't know what to do, who to trust.  And can you blame her?  'Cause I got to tell you people, all this aggro?  It is not helping!"

From the crowd, a lone voice yelled, "Stick it up the Mourner scum!"  The voice was quietened by a lot of shushing and some rude comments.

"Yeah, very helpful," Ace said.  "Okay, look at it this way.  You'll have plenty of chances to get stroppy with all those people who don't share your exact same worldview.  So just for today, give the bullshit a rest.  What do you think?  How about today you're human beings, first and foremost?  Now the girl's name is Doriel.  You can get her image at this checkpoint.  Learn it.  Look for her.  You find her, take her to an enforcer.  All right?"

There was a moment's pause.  Ace looked at the crowd.  The crowd looked at her.  She had no idea whether she was getting through to them.  She was pretty sure that the kind of people who would toss the word 'rape' around as either an insult or a threat were not the kind of people who'd bother themselves over the welfare of a lost child.

"Your choice," she said, more quietly.  "You can start this new colony off by wanting to hurt people who are different.  We should be good at that, right?  Earth was famous for it!  _Or_...or you can kickstart Colonis by helping to save a lost kid who's going through hell."  She paused for breath.  "Who do you want to be, Colonis?  Ask yourselves that.  _Who do you want to be?_ "

Someone in the crowd shouted, "Show me.  Show me the image!"  From her raised position, Ace could tell it was one of the enforcers, but most of the crowd didn't know that.  And it did the trick, because other people started shouting it too, not to be outdone.  The crowd eased back from the line of uniforms.  In a matter of thirty seconds the uniforms had loosened their barricade, and much of the crowd - the people who hadn't wandered off or started their own mini-scuffle that was swiftly broken up by two enforcers - was, unbelievably, organising itself into a line to look at Celic's data-tablet.  People were copying the image to their own devices and then showing each other.  Then they were wandering off, gesturing each other down different tracks.

It was a bit rambling and unstructured, but a search for the missing girl was underway.  Ace watched it, gobsmacked by her own ability to make a difference.

Then she caught sight of a face, and everything froze.

It was a familiar face, male, scruffy, framed with long dark hair that partly hid his eyes.  And it belonged to a man who was lurking on the far side of the main track, staring straight at her as the crowd dispersed.

"Him!" Ace shouted.  She nudged one of the uniforms still within reach until she got his attention.  "That guy, over there!  I want to talk to him!"

"What guy?" the guard said.

"Long hair.  Hiding his face.  He's looking right at me!"  She pointed to the place where she'd seen the man, but in the seconds she'd looked away he'd moved.  She scanned the crowd desperately.  That was the third time she'd seen that man watching her, and she was no longer putting it down to a sense of paranoia.  "Shit!"  She leaned on Carson's shoulder and hopped down from the table.  "I need to find him."

She pushed through the uniforms and the people waiting to help the search, and she picked a direction and hoped for the best.  Carson kept up, though he hadn't seen the guy and couldn't help.  After ten fruitless minutes she headed back and then tried the other way down the main track.

Nothing.  The long-haired man had vanished without a trace.  She made her way back to the checkpoint, wondering whether this make-do-and-mend colony could furnish her with a police sketch artist.

Frustration turned to joy, however, when she noted the crowd parting to one side around the checkpoint.  She looked up to see a uniform walking towards them, holding the hand of a grubby and bewildered girl.  The kid didn't seem to be bothered by the hand-holding this time.

People around them muttered, "Doriel," and "They found her," and "She's safe, it's okay."  Some broke into a round of applause.  The uniform marched right up to Ace, like she was in charge or something.

"She hadn't gone far," the enforcer said cheerfully.  "Someone spotted her behind the medic's unit four blocks over."

Ace sighed relief.  "Doriel?" she said.  The girl nodded, all reddened eyes, smears of what was probably her mother's blood over her arms, her face, her clothes.  She looked like she was expecting to be charged with murder.  "Hi.  I'm Ace.  And you're having the shittest time imaginable, right?"  Doriel nodded again.  "Well you're not on your own any more.  For a start, you've got me.  And my best friend, the Doctor - he's going to find out who the bad guy is, because trust me, no one does that better than him."  Ace glanced around at the watching crowd, all of them notably less prone to violent insults than they had been half an hour earlier.  Then she swept her eyes over Doriel's frame.  "Are you hurt?"

Doriel gave her head a tiny shake.  "I told her I hate her," she whispered.  She sniffed, lifting her chin, trying for bravado.  "It's the last thing I said."  And then she sobbed and fell into Ace's arms.

"I know," Ace said with a sigh, rubbing the girl's back.  "Only comfort I can give you is that your mum was eleven once.  She knew exactly how full of crap we can be at that age."

"I'll never tell her now.  That I didn't mean it."

"She knew."

"We came here to get away from my dad."  Doriel pulled away suddenly.  "I'm not going back to Lunar Colony.  Back to him.  You can't make me."

"I wouldn't dream of it."  Ace brushed Doriel's hair to one side.  "So.  First things first.  I'm thinking you need a wash and some clean clothes, maybe some grub.  And then you're going to need to find some serious strength from somewhere, kiddo.  The enforcers are going to need questions answering.  You're just going to have to get your head down and get through it.  For your mum."

Doriel nodded.  "I know.  I'll try.  But I didn't see him!  I ran off.  Didn't come back until..."  The bravado slipped and Doriel's face sagged with misery.  "It was too late.  I couldn't help.  Icouldn'thelpIcouldn'thelpI-"

"I know.  Shh."  Ace embraced the girl again and let her cry for a while.  Then Ace felt Doriel's head come up, like she was looking at something over Ace's shoulder.  Ace turned, to see the Doctor standing beside Celic.  Carson was still off to one side, watching anxiously.

"Thought you'd gone with Dr Bala," she said to the Time Lord.

"Not yet."  He stepped forward and held out a hand.  "Good morning, Miss Schacht.  I'm the Doctor.  I catch monsters."

Doriel looked at him appraisingly.  "Yeah.  She told me."

"Oh, Ace catches monsters too.  She's just modest about it."  He smiled when Doriel managed a handshake.  "Now then.  Enforcer Celic here has informed me that she knows a place where we can get porridge with sliced banana and honey.  The banana, alas, is dried and not fresh, but it's better than nothing.  And it'll give us all a chance to get acquainted.  Will you join us?"

Doriel looked at Ace.  Ace grinned.  "I could eat.  What about you?"

Doriel nodded.  Carson stepped forward.  The Doctor saw him, and his friendly expression tightened into hostility.  He handed Doriel over to Celic, and pulled Ace aside.

"Well done," he said.

Ace frowned.  "Wasn't me that found her."

The Doctor arched a brow.  "Perhaps not.  But you accomplished in twenty minutes what might have taken several hours, if the authorities had been left to their own devices."

"Oh.  Right."

"Now - get rid of Carson."

Ace blinked.  "What?"

"Please?"

"Why?"

He got irritated and said, "Because I'm suspicious by nature."

"Yeah?  Well if you're worried about murderers, which, by the way - totally sensible thing to be worried about right now - you might want to remember this.  Apart from myself, there are two people, and _only_ two people, on this whole sodding planet who I'm one hundred per cent confident did not have anything to do with what happened to Doriel's mum.  One of them is you.  The other one is Carson, seeing as how he was rescuing us from a cave two hours away from the settlement, right when the shit hit the fan in sector 7D last night.  All right?"

"Never mind his alibi, just get rid of him."

"He came here to have breakfast with us!"

The Doctor turned away and muttered, "With you, perhaps."

"Hey!  He helped me look for the long-haired guy!"

That got the Doctor's attention again.  "Who?"

"Face in the crowd.  Seen him three times now, staring at me.  Lurking.  Seriously suspicious.  And Carson just spent twenty minutes helping me look for him, so I can't tell him to get knotted!"

The Doctor opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again.  In that moment he looked like Ace so often felt when they adventured together: like he was trying to play catch-up but knew, truly, that he'd never really succeed.  Then his eyes narrowed and he said, "Fine.  Go and have breakfast with him.  But I don't want him present when I talk to Doriel."

"Why not?  Because a police investigation is no place for civilians?"  She was sneering.  "Except, you know, us."

"Exactly."  The Doctor turned away, hesitated, ran a fractious hand through his unruly hair and then turned back.  He pinched his lips tight together and blinked hard.  Ace was about to ask him what was wrong - as if dead females in body-bags and near-misses in insect lairs and weird straggly-haired blokes who disappeared as soon as you tried to look for them wasn't enough - but the Doctor pulled Ace close with an arm, stealing the words she was going to speak.  He kissed her brow, surprising her: a hard kiss that lingered before he pulled back.  "Stay where you can be seen.  Don't trust anyone.  I'll meet you at the cabin at midday."  He looked at her, breathing as if he'd been running.  "You are...Ace, you are a constant source of astonishment and admiration."  He hesitated a moment more, then whispered, "Goodbye."

He walked away, Doriel and Celic both in tow.  Ace watched him go.

"What was all that about?" asked Carson.

Ace shook her head.  "I honestly don't know."

"Shouldn't we go with them?"

Ace looked at Carson.  She grinned.  "Not much of a porridge fan.  But yesterday I smelled a rumour that this place can produce a decent bacon sarnie..."

~~~


	4. Chapter 4

_Settlement Alpha_

_Day Two_  
_12:10 pm_

 

Ace picked her way along the tracks and paths of the Alpha Settlement, heading for the cabin in sector 7D and her rendezvous with the Doctor.  As she walked, she tried to keep an eye out for the guy with the long straggly hair.  This was difficult to achieve, given that she was also trying to keep her head down and avoid any and all eye contact.  The Doctor had been correct: the Alpha Settlement was a powder-keg of tensions.

She'd been dwelling on her relationship with the Doctor for the last hour.  The complexities seemed to be on the increase.  There was (a) this daft cover-story about the Doctor being her husband, which (b) Carson had already seen through, given the conversation they'd had over breakfast, to which she'd responded that (c) yes, it was a lie, and yes, she might be open to a touch of flirtation with the guy who'd saved her from becoming dinner for giant insects the previous night.  Although she'd refrained from mentioning that (d) she was uncomfortably aware that she couldn't put her hand on her heart and say that her feelings for the Doctor were entirely platonic.

She'd left Carson mid-morning, as he'd needed to register for the work he'd been allocated.  Since that time she'd wandered the tracks of the settlement, getting a feel for the layout and the landmarks and all those tensions so palpably apparent.

The enforcer who occupied the 7D checkpoint was not Celic.  Ace recognised the guy from the early-morning scuffling, and he nodded at her and even reached to his lapel in a weird kind of salute.  Ace nodded back and walked down the pathway, musing on how being saluted was just plain weird.  Sticking her oar in normally saw her getting chucked in a dungeon, not treated like some kind of civic hero.

It was a little after midday.  She was late.  The Doctor was used to that.  She opened up the cabin door with the electronic key, then remembered that they'd only been issued with one of them.  The Doctor wouldn't have been able to get inside...except, of course, he was the Doctor.  He probably had a handy way into Fort Knox when required.

She stepped inside and closed the door.  "Professor!" she called.  Then she smirked.  "Hi, honey!  I'm home!"  She did her best to wipe the mud from her boots on the mat in the tiny hall.  Unlacing her Docs was too much like hard work, though, so she ignored the slippers.  She cracked the door to the living quarters.

The room was empty.  Ace rolled her eyes.  Typical.  He'd probably got all caught up in the chase for Silja Schacht's killer.  She clomped over to the table and chairs.  Her eye was caught by a piece of paper trapped beneath a mug.  She lifted the mug and picked up the paper, and she read:

 

> _Ace,_
> 
> _Gone back to the TARDIS.  Taken Doriel with me._
> 
> _You've been telling me for a long time that you are no longer a child.  It's time I listened.  Make your choices free of my influence. Trust yourself.  Colonis is in your hands, and I can think of none better._
> 
> _D._

She read the note three times, first confused, then annoyed, then frightened.  In a surge, Ace remembered grabbing the Doctor by his lapels and snarling in his face.  Calling him every name under the sun.  She recalled a kiss to her brow and a whispered 'goodbye'.

With all these thoughts came the dreadful, undeniable certainty that the Doctor wasn't coming back.

She sat down heavily.  Her heart was racing.  She wondered if she was going to have a panic attack.  She'd experienced them after Manisha, for a while.

He'd left her.  He'd known he would leave her here; he always knew.  He never made a move without knowing the six moves he'd make afterwards.  She'd seen the signs, too: all that moodiness; all the 'thinking'.  The dark overtones to his expressions which should have told her he had secrets she wasn't going to like.

He always knew.  And now he'd managed to exchange her for a new lost-soul: a new broken thing to fix; a new bit of _wabi-sabi_ to appreciate.

And it was all because he'd seen some stupid record in his databanks.  There'd been no discussion, no questions.  Some colony's treaty bore her name, and that was it: he'd decided that she wasn't worth fighting history for.  Ace hated the fact that she'd have taken on history, and the future, and the universe entire, to fight for him.  And she'd have fucking well won, too, because she was Ace and he was the Doctor and they belonged together.

"You utter bastard," Ace murmured, past the lump in her throat.  "Couldn't even dump me to my face."  She slammed her fist down on the table, hard enough to hurt.  Then she sniffed and added, "I want a divorce."

~~~

 

_Day Two_  
_4:55 pm_

 

Whatever the Doctor had decided to do, Ace had reminded herself that she remained in control of her own actions.  There was still a killer on the loose.  There was a range of hills filled with giant wasps some distance to the west.  There were diametrically opposed factions within the colony that wanted nothing more than to do grievous bodily harm to each other.

Trying to tackle at least one of these problems had seemed a more sensible use of her time than sitting alone in her cabin, brooding.  So she'd got up, let herself out and walked the short distance to the buildings that formed the heart of the settlement.  They were, in fact, just another set of the standard prefabs, though they'd obviously been added to as the settlement had been established.  Now they resembled a rather chaotic bit of Lego modelling done by an imaginative child: a block here, a block there, all regular and perpendicular but describing no classical symmetry.  This set of buildings was known as 'The Hub'.

Inside she'd run into Celic who'd just come off shift.  A brief conversation had revealed that the enforcers already knew that the daughter of their murder victim had been taken back up to the passenger liner in the care of the colony's Scientific Adviser, for fear that the murderer might yet target the child.  Celic had pointed Ace in the direction of her boss, Chief Enforcer Pirks, when Ace asked what she could do to help.  Pirks had frowned at her and sent her to talk to Councillor Sykes: one of the colony's leaders.  Sykes had reviewed the skills listed on Ace's 'record' (and god only knew where _that_ had come from), and sent her back to Pirks with the recommendation that she be integrated into the team investigating Silja Schacht's murder.

And here she was.

"Ms Ace?"

Ace looked up wearily from the screen she was reading, to see one of Councillor Sykes's lackeys waiting for her attention.  "Just 'Ace' is fine," she said, not for the first time that afternoon.

"Um, right.  This came for you."  The admin lackey held out a parcel wrapped in a plastic pouch.

Ace frowned.  "For me?"

"Yes.  Says your name.  Right here."  The lackey pointed at the bar-code on the pouch.  "Ace McShane.  Care of the Hub.  That's this building," he added, in case Ace was confused about where in the settlement she might currently be.

Ace shook her head.  "Okay, let's start here.  You are?"

"Councillor Sykes's personal secretary."  When Ace continued to stare at him, awaiting more information, the lackey added, "Mr Akasella.  Um.  Shah, if you like?"

"Okay, Shah.  It's nice to meet you.  Now, you're bringing me, what, post?"

"Post?"

"Letter.  Mail.  Parcel."

"I...guess?"

"And this post is coming to me from where?"

Shah shrugged.  "The liner, of course."

"Of course," Ace said.  "What could make more sense?  A parcel that was posted six months ago on planet Earth is being delivered to me here."

"Um, yes."

"After I've been here, what, half an afternoon?"

"Um."

"And it's arrived here on the same ship I came on."

Across the office, Enforcer Keenan snorted a laugh before she went back to the task she was focused on: the search for the elusive 'Mr Straggly Hair'.  Who was also known as: 'We Haven't Got a Proper Suspect so Let's Look for Ace's Stalker'.  (Thanks to a bit of time and effort spent going through the 7D camera footage and the colonial records, once the computer system had come back up that afternoon, he was now also known by the infinitely more useful name of Anders Smit.  And he hadn't been seen at his assigned cabin or workplace for over twelve hours.  Hence the search.)

Shah shrugged again.  "It says your name," he repeated.

Enforcer Keenan called, "Never argue with bureaucracy, Ace!"

"Wouldn't dream of it," she called back.  She sighed.  "Fine.  Thank you very much, Shah.  Do you need me to sign?"

Shah shook his head and moved off, acting as if she'd been talking in a foreign language.  Ace began to examine the pouch with a view to finding out what was inside.

"Ace!" called the enthused voice of Enforcer Chauhan in the corner.

"Dav!" she called back.

"Got the autopsy report down from Dr Bala!"

Given that this would have distracted Chauhan from his job of going through the camera footage for residential sector 7D with a fine-tooth comb for the twenty-eighth time, small wonder he sounded enthusiastic.  A change was, after all, as good as a rest.  Or so they said.

"Finally," she muttered.  She moved across the room that had been allocated to the taskforce assigned to investigate Silja Schacht's murder.  It was easier to do so now than it had been three hours ago, when she'd first joined the team.  Half of the enforcers assigned to the murder had been moved to other cases in the time since.  The afternoon had seen two major criminal incidents: a fire set in one of the covered botanical nurseries on the eastern perimeter of the settlement, and an explosion at the colony's cement-works, just south of the shuttle port.

Things were not going well on Colonis.

Enforcer Chauhan handed her his data-tablet.  Ace scrolled down through the headings in the autopsy report: presentation and clothing; evidence of medical intervention (it seemed Silja's fingers had been broken and reset several times in the past, presumably courtesy of Doriel's father on Lunar Colony); post-mortem imaging (oh lovely); evidence of injuries (now they were getting pertinent); external and internal examinations-

Toxicology.  This was what Ace was interested in.  Because she could not, for the life of her, work out how a woman who was six feet tall and in good muscular shape could have been attacked and overpowered in one of a row of prefabricated cabins so quickly and efficiently that nobody was even alerted to the sound of a scuffle or a cry for help.

There was no evidence of a tranquilliser present in Silja's blood, which was what Ace had been expecting.  But:

"An anticoagulant," she read aloud.  She glanced over to the internal plastiglass window she'd covered with notes, like a whiteboard.  She thought she'd figured out the earliest and latest times the killer could have attended the Schacht cabin.  Now it looked like they might have to change the parameters.  "Shit.  That'll alter our timeline."

"How come?" Chauhan asked.

"Anticoagulant means her blood was prevented from clotting," Ace explained, wondering when the hell she'd turned into a forensics expert when her only real qualification seemed to be a diet of eighties police procedural thrillers.  "So when she bled out, she could have done it more slowly.  I'm thinking normally, to die this way, you have to lose a lot of blood pretty quickly.  Like severing an artery or something.  Gush gush gush.  But if her blood wasn't going to clot, it might take ages.  And even a small injury could be fatal.  Like, you know, people with haemophilia."

Chauhan looked at her, but he just shook his head slightly.

"Point is," Ace said, "Silja might have survived the injuries if she hadn't been dosed with this anticoagulant."  The whole set-up was starting to suggest a special kind of sadistic cruelty.  Murders were bad enough.  Murders designed to prolong the suffering of the victim were unspeakable.  She swallowed the revulsion down.  "Dunno.  I'll have to check with Dr Bala."

"I should ask him to come down?" Chauhan asked.

It was almost laughable, the way she'd become the deputised leader of this taskforce when Chief Enforcer Pirks had headed off to investigate the political shenanigans ripping the settlement apart.  Ace could only put it down to the groundwork that the Doctor had laid that morning.

(Was it really just eight hours since he'd said goodbye?)

"Yeah, do that, will you?" Ace said, as she noted that the anticoagulant Bala had found in Silja's blood had been closely matched to that produced by certain species of leech on Earth.  Weird.

She continued to read the forensic analysis.  Most of the information was of no use to her without a trained medical professional to explain it.  She was as far out of her depth here as the enforcers who were looking to her for some leadership.  Still.  All she could do was her best.  She took each section of the report, one at a time, and processed what she could.

Particles from Silja's fingernails: that rang a bell.  There was that episode of 'Juliet Bravo' where the victim had skin and blood under her nails, and the murderer had a big scratch on his face that he'd tried to cover up with concealer.  Or something.  Of course, it was now 2259, which meant that they could do cleverer things with scrapings from under a murder victim's fingernails.  Maybe some kind of DNA thing?  Ace read on.

She blinked.

She read it again, to be sure.

"Christ in a bollocking bucket," she said.

Chauhan looked up from the comms console.  Across the room, Enforcer Keenan coughed on the coffee she was drinking.

"What?" Chauhan asked.

"Did you read this?" Ace demanded.

"All gobbledegook to me," he admitted.

"Dr Bala got particles from under Silja's fingernails," she said.  "Skin cells and blood which don't match her own."

Chauhan brightened, and demonstrated that he was far from an idiot when he said, "So we've got DNA information on the attacker?"

"Yes we have.  And you know what?"

"What?"

Ace blew her cheeks out at her two colleagues.  "We're not looking for a human being."

~~~

 

_Day Two_  
_8:05 pm_

 

Colonis, conveniently, had a day that was as close to twenty-four hours as made no difference.  And at just gone eight o'clock that evening Dr Bala was free to come and answer some questions.

"Sorry," he said, bustling into the room.  He looked exhausted.  "The explosion at the cement-works.  Eighteen year old kid got shrapnel stuck near his spine.  Tricky surgery."

"You're the only surgeon on Colonis?" Ace asked.

"The only one with orthopaedics experience," Bala said with a shrug.

Ace winced.  "You're in demand today."

Bala nodded.  "So how can I help?"

"Apart from translating your medico-babble?  First off you can tell me if we're looking for a giant walking leech."

Bala laughed.  "Something like that would probably stick out on the surveillance footage, would it not?"

"Probably."  A thought occurred.  "This DNA you found on Silja's fingernails - is it insectoid?"

"Not even a little bit.  Well, not unless alien insects have wildly different DNA to Earth ones.  Why do you ask?"

She wasn't ready to answer that yet.  "Clutching at straws," she said.  "Okay, so if it isn't insectoid then can we narrow down species?  Is there a xenobiologist in the settlement?"

"I think your husband's the nearest thing we have to an expert in that area," Bala said, looking a little bit like he was wondering why she was asking him the question.

"He's up on the liner with the little girl," Ace said, keeping her gaze locked on her data-tablet.  "There's no one else?"

"Not to my knowledge.  I can ask one of my staff to check our medical database - we do have a limited set of alien DNA records."

"Worth a shot.  Thanks."  Ace sighed.  "So we're looking for a creature that looks human but can make like a leech."

"Oh, Ace, search me."  Bala scrubbed a hand over his hair.  "I can tell you what the evidence is.  It's up to your team here to make it fit and find your killer."

"Right.  Well, in order to do that - I don't suppose there's a useful set of DNA records attached to all the uploaded passenger info?" she asked.

"No."  He gave a tired laugh.  "A good proportion of the newcomers haven't even registered their full names."

"Okay.  How about a lovely, clever DNA-sniffing machine in your medical lab?"

"Afraid not."

Ace nodded.  "But if I get you a suspect, can you compare DNA?"

"Yes.  That I can do."

Not for the first time that evening, Ace promised herself that if she ever found herself face to face with the Doctor again she was going to knock his teeth in.  Because if he'd been here, he'd have taken one look at that autopsy data and known exactly what kind of creature they were hunting, and how to find it, and how to keep it from hurting anyone else.

"We need to find this guy Anders Smit," she muttered.  Bala looked like he wanted to take a step back, which made Ace realise she was glowering at him.  "Sorry."

"You have a suspect already?" he asked.

"Sort of.  Someone I saw lurking near the crime scene this morning."

"That would fit.  Killers often like to place themselves near an investigation after they've committed their crime."

"Yeah - that's what I thought.  And he hasn't been back to the cabin where he's supposed to stay since this morning.  Nor has he been anywhere near the transporter garage where he's supposed to be working.  One minute he's staring at me while I'm trying to organise a search for Doriel Schacht.  Next minute, he's vanished for good."

"Suspicious," Bala agreed.

"Yeah.  So he's not exactly a suspect yet, but he's...what is it the cops say?  We want to interview him in order to rule him out of the investigation.  Or something."

"I wouldn't dream of telling you how to do your job," Bala said.

"No?  God, I wish someone would.  Okay, then."  Ace brandished the data-tablet with the autopsy report on it and scrolled down to some of the less comprehensible areas.  "I need this in layman's terms.  Can you spare someone from your staff to translate?"

"Not tonight.  Tomorrow?"

"Good enough," Ace agreed.

Since Bala was on the verge of exhausted collapse, Ace sent him away.  She sat down, and only then remembered the pouch that had been delivered almost three hours earlier.  The revelation about the killer had been a distraction since then.

She split open the pouch and extracted a small box wrapped in brown paper.  On the paper was written:

Ace McShane  
c/o The Hub, Colonis Alpha Settlement

The handwriting was familiar.  Ace swallowed.  This parcel was from the Doctor.  The question was: had he sent it before they'd even arrived, or had he left the liner with Doriel as his new sidekick, and nipped back in time to set up the delivery from Earth?

Ace suspected the latter.  She tore open the wrapping and found within an electronic device, perhaps the size of a credit card, mounted on an elasticated headband.  Also within was another note.

 

> _Ace,_
> 
> _You were right.  Enclosed is a piece of the TARDIS's telepathic circuits.  With this you should be able to talk to the Irrizor.  The device will only work for a mind that the TARDIS recognises, so don't go delegating this one._
> 
> _The device will work best if you're no more than five metres from the nearest hive member.  Position the device behind your left temple._
> 
> _D._

"I was right about what?" Ace mused aloud.

"What's that?" Chauhan asked.

"Nothing."

She stared at the device.  The bare bones of a plan - something so tentative it hardly deserved the description - were forming in her mind.  They rested on a couple of ideas that had been simmering on the back-burner.

Ace had seen, that morning, how two adversarial groups could be calmed and even work together when they made a common cause.  She had briefly considered announcing the existence of the Irrizor to the colony in order to fit the bill of 'common enemy', but she'd discarded the option.  The Irrizor were the natives; they were here first.  To let humanity gang up against them, with their rifles and disruptors and so forth...genocide would ensue.  Ace wasn't prepared to be a party to that.  Not even when the targets were the big scary insects that might have eaten her up.

But there was another common cause to be made.  There was a killer in their midst: a killer that looked human but wasn't.  Put that idea together with a remnant from some wildlife documentary Ace had seen years and years ago, about how insects used sense organs on their antennae to detect smells with great sensitivity.  And then add in the awareness that some of the caverns and tunnels she had explored with the Doctor the previous evening had not been natural formations but had been created by the Irrizor, demonstrating that the species had the ability to work stone in a way that tiny Earth-bound insects tended not to do...

Almost a plan.  It was almost in reach.  She just needed to wait for the disparate strands to twist themselves into a stronger rope.  Something that would bear the weight of her eternal optimism.

Across the room, a comms point bleeped for attention.  Enforcer Chauhan waved his hand over one section of the console to pipe the feed through to the room's crystal speakers.

"Taskforce," he announced.

"Celic here," came a familiar voice.  "There's been another one.  7D again.  Get down here, and bring Bala and Ace."

Everyone looked at each other for a moment, feeling drained and depressed and, at least in Ace's case, scared.  Then they all dropped everything and headed out.

Twenty minutes later, Ace was clad in a set of hooded plastic coveralls.  Alongside a Dr Bala who was running on fumes, she stepped inside a prefab only a few cabins along from the one she had been allocated.

The man lying on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood was unfamiliar to her.  His injuries looked identical to the ones described in the autopsy report for Silja Schacht.  It seemed that the killer was not particular when it came to the victim's gender.

As if that wasn't bad enough, in the shower room there lay the lifeless body of a girl, barely a teenager: the dead man's daughter.  This figure was also a stranger to Ace, but the bloody and jagged words that had been carved into the skin of the girl's thighs were not.

 

 

 

 

Over and over.

Ace covered her mouth with a hand and hurriedly excused herself.

~~~

 

_Day Two_  
_11:35 pm_

 

The rain started again late that evening.  The clouds blocked the light from whichever of Colonis's two moons might have been overhead.  Around the Tetris-block buildings that made up the Alpha Settlement's Hub, the standing lights made the rainfall appear shimmery and ethereal.

Ace was getting drenched.  She had no hood.  Nor did she have a friend with an umbrella; not any more.  She hadn't felt this alone since she was sixteen.

She didn't care.  Screw it all.  Screw the whole fucking universe to hell and back again.  For now she was fine as she was, so she stood outside in the cold late evening, getting wet and wondering how the hell she was going to find the courage to go back to the cabin.

"Ace," a voice said.

She looked up.  Carson was heading her way.  He looked solemn.

"Hi, Boy Scout," she said flatly.  "How's your day been?"

"Better than yours, I'm hearing."  He sighed.  "So we've got ourselves a serial killer, have we?"

"Looks like."

"Any suspects?"

"You've been watching the same thrillers I have."  She tried a wan smile, but she wasn't sure it came off.  "Suspect, kind of.  In custody, no."

Carson nodded, like he was expecting to hear more, but Ace just shrugged and left it at that.  "So, er, where's your fake husband?" he asked, reminding her that only that morning they had flirted over breakfast.

Since she didn't know the answer to that question, she gave him a half-truth.  "Up on the liner.  Went up this morning.  Took the little girl with him."

Carson narrowed his eyes.  "Oh, for f-...why?"

Ace frowned.  She didn't know why Carson seemed angry about this, given that the only person who really deserved to be angry was Ace herself.  "What's your problem?"

"My problem?  I think your friend's an idiot, that's what.  Someone's murdering people down here.  Right next door to where you live.  Why the fuck would he think it's a good idea to leave you here on your own?"

"Oh.  That.  It's because I'm notorious.  Apparently," Ace said.

"What?"

"Doesn't matter."  She sniffed and drew her shoulders back.  "Were you looking for me, or was this an accidental meeting?"

"I was looking for you.  I went to your place, but there's still a crowd there.  It's where I heard about...you know."

"Yeah."

"I, er, guess they don't think the Doctor was involved, anyway."

"Oh, we already had an alibi, me and him.  For the first one.  We were trapped in a cocoon.  You remember.  You were there."

"I remember."  Carson tried a smile.  "Guess I've got an alibi too, then."

"Lucky, lucky us."

He narrowed his eyes.  "You look done in.  Want some supper?"

She realised she hadn't eaten since halfway through the afternoon.  Then she considered her stomach.  "No," she said.  Her mind's eye was still filled with the vision of crimson, angular words sliced into young, pale flesh.

"They can't be expecting you to work into the night.  You need some rest."

"I can't go back to that cabin," Ace said dully.

"Well of course you can't.  It's too close to the other ones.  And I hear he's expressed an interest in you."

Ace huffed a humourless laugh.  "So much for 'need to know'."

Carson tilted his head to one side.  "My place, then?  I promise to keep my hands to myself."

Ace thought about this.  She'd already established that if she was going to trust anyone on this colony, right now her only sensible option was Carson.  And he'd already demonstrated his helpfulness: saving her from giant wasps; helping her search for Anders Smit.  For some reason, the hostility in the Doctor's gaze when he'd looked at Carson early that morning also sprang to mind.  At the time she'd wondered whether the Doctor was just the tiniest bit jealous.

God, she could be so stupid...

These various thoughts came together and made her nod her assent  She wasn't sure whether she was trying to punish the Doctor, or herself, or whether none of it mattered.  Maybe all she could do now was what she'd done when she'd landed on Iceworld: take whatever she was offered, and go with whatever happened.

"Your place," she agreed.  They moved off.  "And for the record, you can do what you like with your hands."

~~~


	5. Chapter 5

_Settlement Alpha_

_Day Three_  
_2:15 am_

 

The rain had stopped.  The night was dark.  Ace couldn't sleep.

She stood outside Carson's cabin and watched the moonlight trying very hard to break through the cloud cover.  The settlement was surprisingly quiet, after a day that had seen two politically-motivated terrorist attacks and two further murders.

In her hand she held the Doctor's device: her hotline to the Irrizor.  She was having a conversation with herself that went something like this:

_"It'd be stupid to go now.  It's dark."_

_"So what's the penlight in your pocket for?"_

_"I wouldn't be able to find my way."_

_"You can't find your way due west from the stinky pig-pens, when there is a compass in your pocket right next to the penlight?"_

_"I should wait for daylight."_

_"And then people will see you go, and wonder where you're off to.  You need to sort this without risking all-out war between the humans and the giant wasps."_

_"Last time I went there they tried to eat me."_

_"This time you can ask them nicely not to."_

_"What if the device doesn't work?"_

_"Then improvise."_

_"What if they don't even care what I say?  What if they're just hungry?"_

_"You have weapons.  And legs.  You can always run away."_

_"If I go on my own I might not come back."_

_"So what?  Least it will serve the Doctor right."_

_"This isn't about punishing him!  I get this wrong, I might screw up the whole timeline."_

_"Or maybe that's what's supposed to happen.  Maybe the civic hero known as 'Ace' mysteriously disappears one night.  Her remains are never found, but her words are remembered, and the colony is brought together as it tries to find out what happened.  Colonis names its treaty in her memory.  History on a plate."_

Ace told herself to fuck off.  Then she zipped her jacket up higher and glanced absently back at the door to Carson's cabin.  He was asleep.  No point in waking him.

She'd walked only a half-dozen steps when she heard her name called.  She stopped, turned around.  Carson was racing to catch up.  Internally she bristled; she hadn't even noticed the sound of the cabin door.  She definitely needed to be more attuned to her surroundings.  There was, after all, a killer on the loose.

"Thought you were asleep," she said to him.

He hesitated.  "I was," he said.  He looked flustered.  Maybe because the woman he'd had sex with an hour ago had just got up, got dressed and walked out into the night.

Ace tried to smile.  "You should go back to bed."

"Where are you going?"

"Underground.  Same place you found me yesterday."  She frowned.  "Technically, the day before yesterday."

He opened his mouth, closed it again.  "Why?"

"Because I need to try again."

"To do what?"

Ace thought about how much she should say.  Since Carson was aware of the existence of the Irrizor - and hadn't been blabbing about them - there was already a certain trust in place.  So if she was going to take someone with her on this mission, he was the obvious choice.  He'd behaved like a decent enough guy, so far.  It wasn't his fault he'd been lacklustre in bed.

"I need to talk to the Irrizor," she said.

"Right.  The Irrizor.  And, er, who's that again?"

Ace tried not to roll her eyes.  "That would be the big scary insects that put me and the Doctor in the giant cocoon."

"Oh.  Right."

"Yeah.  But since I was, technically, trespassing, and since they don't have any reason to trust human beings, I think it's worth another bash.  I need to ask for their help."

"What kind of help?"

Ace narrowed her eyes.  "Well, amongst other things, I think they might be able to help me catch a serial killer."

Carson perked right up.  "Really?"

"Really."

"I mean - you really want to stop this guy?"

"Let's see, now.  Do I want to stop a murdering piece of shit from cutting people up and letting them bleed to death?  Hmm."  Ace tut-tutted.  "Well, of course I do!  What is it with you, are you still half-asleep or something?"

He blinked blearily.  "It's after two in the morning.  Only half-asleep is pretty good going, I think."

Which was fair comment.  "So are you coming, then?" she asked.  "It might be dangerous.  But I'm going whether you come along or not."

"If this helps catch the killer," Carson said firmly, "then it's worth the risk."

~~~

 

_Caves beneath the western plateau_

_Day Three_  
_5:35 am_

 

"Look," Ace said to the giant insect, speaking out loud in spite of the device which pressed against her head, "do you mind if I sit down?"

They'd been at this for almost ten minutes.  Before that there'd been a tense stand-off with two Irrizor guards.  And before that there'd been a scary scramble and chase through unknown tunnels in order to define a defensible position, such that she could make her first desperate attempts to open the lines of communication.  (She'd thought it important to try to do that without actually having to shoot her pursuers.)

And of course, all that had happened after two hours spent stumbling over darkened foothills in order to reach the caves.  Trying to line up landmarks in the dark and maintain a westerly direction was no easy task.  Ace was, by now, fatigued.  Her muscles ached and there was a nasty graze over her right elbow where she'd fallen and scraped it.  Outside, it would be dawn in an hour or so.  Carson would have to enjoy the sunrise on his own; she'd left him at the entrance to the caverns and told him that if she didn't return within a two-hour window then he should leg it back to the settlement and advise them that they had some seriously scary six-legged neighbours.

The hive member remained shadowy.  It had not risked coming closer than the other end of the cavern.  In the hazy light from the wall-mounted torches, Ace could just about see the way the giant insect pressed together the two legs it wasn't presently standing on.  Into Ace's mind came the hive member's 'voice': a rustling kind of communication that she was still getting used to.

[You wish to rest?]

"Right.  S'pose you guys don't do a lot of sitting," she said.  "Not having, you know..."  What was the diplomatic way of saying 'bums' to giant insects?  Of course, having thought that particular thought while wearing this particular communication device, she'd just said it anyway.

[Our forms are different,] the hive member agreed.  The comment was delivered with an undercurrent of humour.  Ace was convinced that the tiny piece of the TARDIS that formed an interface between her thoughts and the insect's was doing a brilliant job of translating.  After an inauspicious start, this was going better than she'd hoped for.

"Okay, then," she said, after settling herself down against the cavern wall with a sigh of relief.  "Okay.  Let me recap."  She put her stun-gun down on the ground, still within reach but far enough away that her insectoid companion didn't feel threatened.  "Back when your buddies put me and the Doctor in the big cocoon, you weren't actually relegating us to the larder."

[You considered that we would eat you?]  The question was asked with a sense of revulsion.

Ace shrugged.  "Thought it was a possibility."

[We do not eat mammal flesh,] the hive member told her.  Revolted, and just a touch haughty with it.

"Well," Ace said, "that's fair enough.  I wouldn't be going 'yummy' if someone put a plate of wasps in front of me."

[Assumptions,] the hive member said, [can be dangerous.]

"Yep.  Pretty much nailed that one, mate."  Ace frowned.  "Do you have a name?"

[We are Irrizor.]

"No, you personally.  A title, designation, an identifier of some kind?"

A pause.  [This one communicates.  That is the designation.]

Ace grinned.  "Why, Mr Ambassador, you spoil us!"

[This one does not understand.]

"An advertisement.  For chocolate.  On my home planet.  Which, I suppose, is a really stupid reference to be making right now.  Point is - you're an ambassador.  A diplomat."

There was a pause, as the hive member processed the thought that went along with Ace's words.  [Your analogy is adequate, but the gender is incorrect.  This one is mainly female.]

"'Mainly,' eh?"  Ace nodded.  "Have days like that myself.  So let me get this straight, _Madame_ Ambassador.  That cocoon business - it was just a sort of holding cell?  Keep us in one place until you could come and do the diplomat-ing?"

[This one was sent for.  To discover your purpose.]

"But we managed to scarper before you got here."

[Yes.  Do you mean harm to the hive?]

"No.  Course not.  And I'm glad you're hearing this telepathically, 'cause that means you know I'm telling the truth."

[Truth?]

"You know.  I'm not lying."

A pause.  The hive member rubbed its legs together again.  Ace was beginning to wonder if it was a nervous tick.  Perhaps the old adage was correct; perhaps they really were more afraid of her than she was of them.

[This one understands.  Mammals express themselves with deliberate inaccuracy to each other.]

"Sometimes."

[The hive does not have experience of such a thing.]

"Right.  That sounds both really wonderful and really terrifying.  But getting back to your point - no, I don't want any harm to come to your hive.  Now we're past that first misunderstanding and can actually, you know, talk to each other?  Seems to me you're a perfectly nice bunch of people."

[The other mammals have caused harm to our landscape,] the hive member pointed out.

"The other mammals didn't know you're here."

[We were afraid, three solar-orbits ago when they first came.  We have remained hidden.]

Solar-orbits?  Oh.  Years.  "Probably sensible," Ace acknowledged.  "Okay, full disclosure.  Some of those other mammals will take one look at you and they'll get hostile.  Mainly 'cause of fear.  On the other hand, lots of them will be like me.  They just want to do their best to get along.  But I haven't told any of them about you yet.  I don't want things to escalate."

[You brought with you a guard.]

"Guard?  Nope.  Oh, you mean Carson?  He was just company on the walk."  She did a double take.  "Hang on - you know he's outside?"

[The hive is aware.]

Ace narrowed her eyes.  "Please tell me you can smell him.  That would be seriously good news."

A pause.  [To smell is to use your olfactory sense?]

"Yep.  Do it with my nose.  Right here."  Ace touched her nose.  The action, unfortunately, triggered a powerful reminder that the Doctor was no longer present to nudge her nose for her.  This, in turn, made her dwell on how she'd probably never see him again.

[Your thoughts grow confused.]

"Yeah.  Sorry.  I'm not trained in the mind-to-mind stuff."  Ace shook away her sense of loss.  "I just miss a friend of mine."

[Do you require time to compose yourself?]

"No.  No, I require a kick up the backside, 'cause there's more important things to think about."  Ace sniffed.  "Getting back to Carson - how come you know he's close by?"

[His presence changes the air.]  The hive member crept forward, all scuttling legs and multifaceted eyes.  [We monitor the air like this.]  She twitched her antennae.

"Okay.  And the way I change the air - is that different to the way Carson, outside, changes the air?"

[Of course.  You are not the same mammal.]

"Excellent.  You just made my day, Ambassador.  Cheers."

The ambassador moved closer still.  Behind her the two guards came into view, watching with what Ace had come to realise was anxiety.  She looked up at the hive member.  God, the Irrizor really were big.  It was the striped pattern on their abdomens that reminded Ace of wasps, but their heads and thoraxes seemed more to resemble damselflies.  They were winged, but Ace had no way of knowing whether the wings were functional or vestigial; she had some vague memory of reading that if bumblebees were any bigger then they'd never be able to fly.  The Irrizor were a whole shedload bigger than your basic bumblebee.  And they were imposing, and scary-looking.  Primarily because they were _seriously_ non-humanoid-

[This one means you no harm,] the ambassador said with an undercurrent of concern.

"Nor I you," Ace agreed.  "But it's hard to overcome the fear."

[Yes.  Perhaps it should be attempted, though?]

"I'd shake on that, if I knew which leg to go for."

Humour again came through the telepathic circuits pressed to Ace's head.  These guys might look scary, but there was still common ground to be found.

A stray thought echoed through her mind: _'So much more alike than we're different...'_

[This one agrees.  You may shake this leg,] the ambassador said, and lifted her topmost right leg.

Ace got to her feet.  She left her gun where it lay because there was no point in undoing all this goodwill.  She stepped forward, as slowly as the hive member had done.  The insect towered over her, twice her height.  There was a faint scent in the air of the cavern, perhaps coming from the Irrizor.  It reminded Ace of the resin Manisha used to put on her violin bow.  It was not unpleasant.

Ace made herself step right up to the ambassador.  Then she stretched out a hand in the direction of the proffered leg.  The insect's appendage did not end with a hand and fingers, but there were bristles of some kind, stiff and angled, that looked like they could be moved and manipulated.  Even as Ace quailed at the contact, she sensed the ambassador's own discomfort at being close to this horribly different, squishy, pale being.  Ace swallowed her nerves and felt the hive member do the same.

The two 'hands' touched.  The insect leg felt cool and smooth and alien.  Ace shook gently, then let go.

"That means lots of things in my culture," she said, stepping back just enough that she didn't feel she was crowding the ambassador.  "It means, 'Hello,' and 'Fare thee well.'  It means, 'Nice to meet you.'  And it means, 'We have an agreement.'"

[This one thanks you for the gesture,] the ambassador said with a hint of formality.  [The hive has known hardship for a long time.  We do not relish the thought of conflict.]

"Hardship?"

[Our resources are depleted.  We eat the fruit and sap of the tzikallay trees.  Fourteen solar-orbits ago we migrated from our original hive-home in the south.  A meteor caused an immense wave which destroyed much of the tzikallay forest there.]

"I'm sorry."

[We settled here because there was a tzikallay forest nearby.  These caverns offered shelter as we began to remake the hive.  We had food, and time.  Safety.]

"And then the humans came and started blowing chunks out of your hills," Ace said gloomily.

[Not only that.  The forest was destroyed.  It was in an ancient impact crater.  The...humans?  The humans tore down the trees to build their place of coming and going.]

"The shuttle-port," Ace said.  She raised her eyes to the heights of the cavern and sighed.  "For fuck's sake.  When we fuck things up, we _really_ fuck things up."

[There are still groves of tzikallay to be found,] the ambassador said.  [We can yet feed.  But we must be careful with our numbers.  In recent cycles we have destroyed many of the eggs our queen produces.  We cannot risk starvation.  It is...difficult.]

Ace didn't need her borrowed telepathy to sense the ambassador's sorrow.  But she had it anyway, and her heart broke right along with her new friend's.  "I'm so sorry.  How can I help?"

[All we want is to raise our young in peace and security,] the hive member said.  [We need food.  If the food cannot be grown here, we need the chance to move on in safety.]

Ace considered.  "I think I know a way to make some things happen that would be good for all of us," she said.  "It's going to take some planning, though.  Are you willing to try?"

There was a tiny brush at her hand.  The ambassador's leg was touching her.  Ace wrapped her hand around it again.  It was easier, the second time.

[We have an agreement,] the hive member said.

~~~

 

_Western foothills_

_Day Three_  
_7:40 pm_

 

"Tell you what," Ace said to Councillor Desmond Sykes.  "Getting a ride in a transporter makes the journey a lot easier."

They were trundling over the bumpy, grassy terrain, heading west out of the settlement.  Daylight was fading to dusk on what had been a very busy day.

"You've been out this way twice now?" Sykes asked her.  He was a tall man, mellow, dark-skinned and bright-eyed, with a shaved head and the impressive ability to look freshly groomed even in the middle of a muddy settlement.

"Yup.  It's a serious walk when the daylight's gone."

He shook his head.  "How did you even know to come out here?"

Ace bought time to think of an answer by covering her mouth as she yawned.  It wasn't difficult to feign exhaustion when you hadn't slept properly in thirty-six hours.  "Oh, that was the Doctor.  He knew where he was heading."

"Your husband."  Sykes looked at her askance.  'The Doctor' was, after all, an odd way to describe your best beloved.

"That's him," Ace said lightly.

As far as the officials here were concerned, the Doctor remained on the passenger liner in orbit, with Doriel Schacht safely in his care.  A good thing too, since the settlement's very own serial killer had struck for a third time, and only an hour ago.  Another mother and daughter had been attacked.  This time, thanks to the hypervigilance of the local enforcers and the way the daughter had retained the presence of mind to flag an emergency call on the cabin's comm, the bleeding victims had been discovered and treated in time to save their lives.  But the pattern was clear now: the killer targeted parent-and-child duos in their homes.  Doriel's adolescent tantrum had saved her life.

"So how did the Doctor know to come out here?" Sykes pressed.

"He'd been through the survey data.  He was sure something had been missed."  Time to change the subject.  "I've been meaning to ask.  How come I got my deputy's badge without so much as an interview?"

Sykes blinked.  "Deputy's badge?"

"You never saw a Western?  Never mind.  How come I'm working with the enforcers?  I don't have a uniform or a stun-rifle.  I never trained.  Never sat an exam.  But since Chief Enforcer Pirks got busy with the extremists, I'm more or less leading the murder investigation."

"Did you, uh, want a uniform?  Not sure it'd be your colour."

"You're being flippant."

"I guess I am."

"And this is an issue I'd expect to be sort of serious."

"What can I tell you?  Less than half the enforcers here have any formal police training.  Of the rest, some have been security guards, some not even that.  Couple months ago, when we realised we were short on enforcers and had trouble on the way, we even recruited a few dozen from the unskilled workforce that came with the original ships."

"Yeah?"

"You gotta understand, Ace - the whole situation here was a mess, right from the start."  He sighed.  "I'd worry we've been set up to fail, except that would mean someone, somewhere actually planned this out.  And I'm not seeing a plan.  I'm seeing the chaos that happens when a bunch of suits back home say whatever the hell they need to say to score a short-term profit."

"I see."

"Everything I've been doing, this last year, getting ready for the first few boatloads?  Damage limitation.  Fire-fighting.  We've been juggling what limited resources we have just to try to keep the settlement together."  Sykes swept a hand over his sleek, shaved head as if he was checking for bristles.  "We needed more guards.  I found them where I could."

"Needs must.  I get it."  Ace grinned.  "Explains why you're bothering with me, anyway."

"Don't get me wrong.  When the Doctor talked to me before he went back to the liner, it was obvious that you were more skilled and experienced than most of my enforcers.  But hey - you think your talents are better suited elsewhere, just go ahead and speak up.  Not like we're not short-handed in a whole bunch of areas."

"Fine."  Ace looked away, trying to appear unconcerned although her feelings for the Doctor were growing ever more confused.  There was irritation at his presumption, resentment at his manipulation.  These feelings warred with a sense of personal shame, because it seemed to Ace that her current job had been offered to her only because someone else had exaggerated her skills.  Faked her C.V.  Mixed in with all that was a kind of pathetic gratitude: that the Doctor had bothered to set her up with a useful role in this crumbling colony before he'd abandoned her to it.  And of course, there was no getting away from the painful hollow inside her caused by his absence.

She shook her head at the jumbled thoughts and decided to change the subject again.

"So you're all set for this meeting?" she asked.

"Ready as I can be," Sykes said.  "I'm trying to be optimistic."  All day, as the council had discussed the news Ace had conveyed about their insectoid neighbours, Sykes had been the leader of the 'doves'.  It was fortunate indeed that he was also the most influential man on the council.  "Right now this colony is one more political dumbass away from imploding."

Ace nodded.  "Any news on the, er, 'dumbasses' that have already struck?"

"Pirks didn't tell you?"  Sykes arched a brow.  "Barely half a day of food rationing and the reds have caved.  Seventeen anonymous tips, all pointing to the same group of five morons - the ones who thought it was a good idea to set fire to the nursery.  They're in for questioning.  I give it one more day before the Mourners turn their guys in.  The kid that got hurt in the explosion - that was bad publicity for them."  He smiled, brilliant white teeth in the semi-darkness.  "You must have noticed the armbands all seem to be getting stuffed in the closet."

"Yeah, well, it's harder to be political when it's put a dint in your only food source."

"Got that right."

"Also when it's threatening the square-footage of your residence?"

"Oh, you heard about the reassignments?"

"I heard there's no choice.  Otherwise we'll be struggling for space when the next boatload arrives.  We can't build, at the moment.  Well, not unless we can arrange some kind of miracle at the cement-works."  Ace glanced at Sykes.  "Which is where the Irrizor come in."

"Right."  Sykes leaned forward and clasped his hands across his knees.  "Okay, so let me be sure I have this straight.  The cement-works uses a two-stage process.  First we use the hammer-mills-"

"The ones currently lying around in little blown-up bits of shrapnel."

"Yeah, those.  We use them to break up the rocks.  Then the little tiny rocks get fired in kilns, along with some other mineral stuff - I forget the recipe-"

"I think you know as much as you need to."

"So.  Our alien neighbours-"

"Technically," Ace pointed out, " _we're_ the aliens."

"Right.  Definitely worth remembering.  So our neighbours are offering to mill the stone to get it ready for the kiln, so we can still produce cement while we work out how the hell we're gonna get our hammer-mills fixed."

"And cement means concrete.  Which means we can still build the city."  Ace grinned.  "Might even mean apartments with a bathtub in the not-too-distant future?"

"Hey, let's not get ahead of ourselves.  So.  In return for this help, we use our skimmers to scout the area and find our neighbours a better food source."

"Or," Ace said, "maybe we look at it this way.  Since we were the ones who completely destroyed their food source, we're pretty much _obliged_ to scout them out a new one.  Which would make the help they're offering us with the cement-works more an issue of their incredible generosity."

"Fair point."  Sykes nodded thoughtfully.  "Seems almost like providence, doesn't it?  How we each have the skills to solve the other's problem?"

"Let's just call it a happy accident, and hope that it steers everyone away from the aggro-options."

Sykes gave a small grunt of assent.  "Let's do that.  So, I will be able to talk to this...okay, what do I call it?  Creature?  Being?"

"'Person' is just fine.  We're all people here together.  We just look different."

"Okay.  But I'll be able to talk?"  Sykes looked at the device Ace held in her hands.  "I know that only works for you, and I'm happy for you to be an intermediary, but there's gonna come a time when I need direct communication."

"You'll be able to communicate," Ace assured him.  "Last night we tried talking without this device - me and the ambassador.  Long as you're close enough, you're fine.  Communication is what the ambassador is trained to do.  It just has to be simpler.  More focused.  It'll take some practice."

"The Doctor can't make me one of these doohickeys?"

"Not any time soon.  This one was years in the making."  Which was true, since the device relied on the time Ace had travelled in the TARDIS.  "Maybe you and the ambassador can come up with some way of refining your communication?"

Sykes sat back as the countryside passed by.  His eyes looked faraway.  "Maybe some kind of written system?" he suggested.  "Do they have written language?  I mean, they train their...hive members, was it?"

"Hive members," Ace concurred.  "And yeah.  They write.  The hive has an archivist."

The transporter climbed through the foothills.  It was dark by the time they arrived at the cliffs below the plateau.  The cavern entrance looked a lot less intimidating when illuminated by headlights and some halogen lamps.  They disembarked and made their way inside.  Ace placed the communication device around her head.

"Just to be clear," said Sykes, "that doohickey won't tell you what _I'm_ thinking, will it?"

"Why?" Ace asked.  "Thinking impure thoughts?"

Sykes smiled.  "Not in the presence of a married woman."

"My loss," she said.  She wanted to flirt with this man, who was clever and thoughtful and very easy on the eye.  Shame she was supposed to be married.  "Anyway, no.  This thing's tuned to the Irrizor."

[Welcome, Ambassador Ace,] came the rustled greeting in her mind.

Next to her, the normally composed Sykes took a hurried step back and exclaimed, "Holy crap!"  One of the enforcers with him stumbled backwards and fell on his arse.  The other one raised her stun-rifle.

"Oy!"  Ace threw herself between the weapon and the hive member, arms outstretched, trying to make herself as big a target as possible.  "That's my friend you're aiming at, half-wit!"

Sykes snapped, "Stand down, Enforcer."  The gun was lowered.

Ace breathed.  "Right.  Better."  She turned to the ambassador.  "Hi there.  How's your day been?"

[The day has been busy,] the ambassador said.  [This one thanks you for your protection.]

Sykes said, "Oh.  Wow.  Man, oh man - I heard that!"  He grabbed Ace's arm.  "It's thanking you, right?"

The ambassador turned to Sykes.  [Welcome,] it conveyed simply.

"Uh - thanks.  Same to you.  I mean, you live here, so that's kind of the wrong thing to..."  His words tailed off and he turned to Ace.  "I seem to be making a mess of this.  Could you tell the, er, hive member that I really appreciate the chance to meet with him.  Her.  It?"

"The ambassador is mainly female.  And you can tell her yourself - don't worry about words for now.  Just focus on the sentiment."

After a moment, the ambassador sent, [Your thoughts are understood and reciprocated.]  Then, to Ace, [Let us step outside.  Your people will be more comfortable in the open.  Then we can discuss this difficulty you are having with the pieces-of-stone-that-cannot-be-cooked.]

Ace grinned.  "We're heading back outside, chaps.  Make yourselves comfy.  Could be a long old night."

~~~


	6. Chapter 6

_Settlement Alpha_

_Day Four_

 

Prior to her arrival on this mud-sodden colony, Ace had never really associated adventures with effort.  Certainly they could involve the occasional burst of strenuous activity: running, climbing, fighting _etcetera_.  But she'd never considered the work she needed to do in order to right the wrongs of the universe as hard.

Before Colonis, adventures just sort of happened.  She'd be in a certain situation, she'd do certain things, the Doctor might offer guidance which she'd either follow or, more likely, ignore, and then - whoosh - the universe was right once again.  Or at the very least it was in better shape than it had been before they'd arrived.

Now, her time was being filled with meetings and strategies and plans and trying to make people agree to stuff.  She'd started keeping mental records on those influential people in the colony who might help make things happen: she was learning the best way to persuade them to her ideas.  She was pretty sure she hadn't talked so much in her life.  She'd had to fill out reports.  She'd had to make presentations to council: her!  Dorothy McShane, public speaking, with holo-slides and guidance notes to download to the councillors' devices.  (Thank heavens for Davinder Chauhan, who could quickly and competently generate the things she needed.)

Her adventure was starting to feel less like romping through the galaxies and more like a particularly intensive homework project.  Maybe this was because she was no longer having an adventure.  This was her life, now.  Colonis was home, and this job she was doing - this stressful, exhausting job - was her daily bread.  Or, more accurately, her daily rice and fungus and weird-green-seaweedy-stuff.

On the fourth day she spent on Colonis, she left the politics and diplomacy in Sykes's capable hands.  Now she'd set the ball rolling with regard to the Irrizor, there was little she could do to help until the next series of talks required her communication device.  In the meantime, she returned her attention to the murder investigation.

Anders Smit, of the straggly hair and haunted eyes, had still not turned up at his cabin nor his workplace, nor on any further camera footage that was being systematically scanned for his face.  Until they found him this was a useless lead, so for now the investigation was all about the basic legwork.

Chauhan had established that in the last four days only a handful of enforcers and the residents of sector 7D had walked past the camera by the checkpoint near Ace's cabin.  Therefore the residents all needed to be interviewed.  It was a slog.  Most were resistant to the process.  They were offended by the need for questioning, especially when they realised that the council had given the go-ahead for the process to involve lie-detection technology - the twenty-third century's version of a polygraph - and a DNA test.  Unfortunately, everyone had secrets and everyone got stressed-out in circumstances like this, and of course the righteous indignation of the innocent looked very much like the defensive hostility of the guilty.

After a day of intensive work, Ace and her team had, perhaps unsurprisingly, nothing substantial to follow up on.  No interview stood out from the rest.  No DNA test matched the evidence obtained from any of the crime scenes.  Ten hours of hard graft, almost seventy incredibly pissed off colonists, and they were no closer to a suspect.

There was, however, a silver lining.  Having spent the day immersed in the investigation, Ace had come up with an idea.  It went like this:

They could not yet identify the killer.  But they could at least make it a lot harder for the killer to commit crimes using his established M.O.

They knew that the assaults made by the killer tended to be a drawn-out process: he (or she, or it) required time and privacy.  And on all three occasions that the killer had thus far struck, the victims had willingly opened their doors to him, allowing him to claim the privacy he required.  This was information they could use.

Ace drew up a set of obvious precautions that the residents of the colony should take.  She wanted people - in particular, parent-and-child family units - to associate a knock on the door with potential danger.

First precaution: colonists should arrange social meetings with friends only in places which were public, thereby restricting the need for house-calls.

Second precaution: any colonist who received an unscheduled knock on their cabin door should refuse to open up to their visitor.

When she discussed the idea with her two team-members, it was Enforcer Keenan who pointed out that most colonists would still probably open their door if the unexpected knock was accompanied by a voice claiming to be an enforcer, or that of a neighbour claiming to be in immediate need of help.  It was reasonable to assume that the killer would predict this, and therefore manage to be persuasive in such situations.

Ace said, "So what we need is a safety net.  A way for people to be able to respond to a visitor without making themselves completely vulnerable."

They discussed the options, and between the three of them they came up with an additional precaution: colonists who needed to open their door to a visitor should call the Hub before doing so, and allow the duty operator in the enforcers' comms room to stay on the line until it could be established that the visitor was innocent.  Where possible, the nearest enforcer would also be dispatched to the location to check that all was well.

Chauhan pointed out that the killer might simply knock, get invited inside as a visitor and spend ten minutes making nice with the resident he or she was visiting.  The killer might then wait until the duty operator or the nearby enforcer was convinced everything was fine, and only then, when the coast was clear, launch his attack.

Which was possible, Ace considered.  "Except," she added, "if the killer plays it like that, we'll at least have a trail of evidence.  And would this murdering bastard really want to indulge his penchant for slicing people up when it's on record that he's the one that called by to see his next victims?"

Consensus was that if the visit was recorded, it might at least make the killer think twice about carrying out another attack.  It had to be presumed that the killer would prefer not to be identified, caught and incarcerated.

Thus was born 'Operation Safety-Net'.  They perfected the language, then Ace took it to Chief Enforcer Pirks.

He reacted with anger.  "What the hell are you thinking?" he demanded.  "We're already stretched so far beyond capacity, we can hardly man the checkpoints."

"So reduce your presence on the checkpoints," Ace suggested.  "Concentrate on the family units.  Elsewhere, you can thin down.  One checkpoint manned in, say, a fifty metre radius.  Now we've got everyone from the liner booked in to the system, the cameras will flag any intruders."

Pirks went purple.  Ace, tired from a long day of interviews and absence-of-progress, realised she had forgotten that Pirks was not one of those people who responded well to logic.  He was all ego.  He liked deference, and feeling important.  He viewed constructive ideas as a direct criticism of his own competence.

"Listen here, _Ms_ McShane," he spat, emphasising the lack of professional title Ace could claim.  "You've got Sykes eating out of your hand, and I'm sure you're very pleased with yourself, getting these insects to help out at the cement-works.  But I'm not impressed.  Colonis is an accident waiting to happen.  The one thing between us and total anarchy is our enforcers.  Burdening them with the need to run about, checking on harmless house-calls, is the very definition of irresponsible."

Ace had to work very hard to swallow the need to insult the man to his face.  Still, she wasn't sixteen any more and she felt the need to act like it, in spite of her own short-fused temper.

So she said, "You know what?  I agree.  I think we're a hair-trigger away from this whole colony falling apart.  And I think you're right - it's going to be the enforcers who make the difference."

Pirks frowned, and whatever he'd been about to sneer or shout was left unsneered or unshouted, at least for the moment.

"It's like you say," she went on.  "It's a question of how best to use our limited resources.  I mean, I don't need to tell you what today's interviews cost us - ten hours of dedicated work from twelve of your enforcers.  That's resource we shouldn't have had to spare."

"Exactly," Pirks said, though he clearly hated agreeing with her.

"And every murder we can't prevent will generate a similar amount of work.  More interviews.  More background checks.  More processing."

"Yes it will."

"Which is why I think you're right.  We have to organise our numbers carefully.  Until we catch this killer, our priority has to be preventing further murders.  More murders equals more strain on your team.  Which is why I'm suggesting we aim for no more murders, even at the cost of the occasional five-minute check for an enforcer – someone who's already posted in the vicinity."

She lifted her hands and weighed one option against the other.

"Of course, it'd be a short-term measure.  But I brought this to you because I need your input on the details."  Ace suddenly realised she was finding the ingratiating lies she needed to spout more entertaining than sickening.  "How would we get the information to the people?  How do we persuade them that they need to stick to these precautions?  How can we show people that if they misuse the safety net, they're misusing the very enforcement service that is trying to keep them safe?"

Pirks narrowed his eyes.  "It'd have to go before the council."

"Would it?  Well, then I think it would be better coming from you," Ace said.  She shrugged and risked a smile.  "I'm just a 'Ms'."

"You're a pain in the arse, is what you are," Pirks retorted, though his anger seemed to have dropped several notches.

"It's been said before; it'll be said again," Ace agreed.  "Look - all we can do at the moment is disrupt this bastard's method.  If we make it hard for him to get to his victims, he might stop killing for a while.  That could buy us the time we need for a breakthrough."

Pirks grunted as he considered this.

"Or," Ace added, "the killer might feel driven to try something else.  Something that bypasses these precautions.  Something more reckless - less private, less controlled.  And that might provide the breakthrough, in and of itself."

"All right, fine," Pirks snapped.  "You've made your case.  Give me what you have.  I'll take it to council."

Ace lifted the data-tablet she carried and sent the relevant document through to Pirks.  As the Chief Enforcer walked away, she sighed at herself.  Pirks knew she'd just manipulated him; he wasn't an idiot.  Ace had learned from the best when it came to manipulation, but she didn't have to like herself for it.  Especially when, for a moment there, she was actually having fun with it.

The stakes were so very high, though.  She wanted to be sure she would never again have to look at a dead body with her name carved into its pale flesh.  Was that really too much to ask?

That evening the council voted in favour of implementing the precautionary measures.  All the newsfeeds carried the information.  Every comm system in every cabin received an update describing the guidelines.  Every employment supervisor was required to deliver a brief to their team at the beginning of each upcoming shift.

By the end of the day they were no closer to catching a killer.  But when the Hub emptied out after eleven o'clock that night, and no news had come through of a fourth assault that day, Ace allowed herself to feel a glimmer of hope.

Maybe she and her colleagues had at least thrown a spanner into their serial killer's works.

~~~

 

_Settlement Alpha_

_Day Six_  
_1:10 pm_

 

"Ace," Councillor Sykes called across the busy communications room.  "Thank goodness."

"You sent for me, master," Ace intoned, because even stressful jobs on muddy colonies shouldn't be taken entirely seriously.  Sykes rolled his eyes at her.  "What do you need?" she asked as she joined him.

"I need the Doctor," he said.  "Captain Crozier can't seem to get a hold of him on the liner."

Of course he couldn't.  The Doctor was long gone.  It was just that Ace was the only person who realised this.

"What do you need him for?" she asked.

"To do his job!"  Sykes sighed.  "Okay - we got company.  Up there."  His eyes raised to the ceiling, but Ace was sure he meant further up than on the roof.  "Alien company."

"Ooh.  What kind?"

"Says he's from Inter Minor.  Representing some guys called the Galactic Federation."

Ace searched her memories and got lucky.  "Blue-ish skin?" she asked.  "Bald spot?"

Sykes's eyes grew round.  "That's him pretty much down.  You've met one before?"

"One of the seminars," she said vaguely.  "And why's he here?"

"Claims this Federation group has been notified that colonists - that would be us - have landed on a planet already inhabited by an intelligent race.  Which would be the Irrizor."  He sighed.  "Apparently there's rules for this kind of thing."

"Notified how?  The Irrizor haven't summoned them."

"Something about a Time Lord," Sykes said.  "Whatever that is."

Ah.

So.  Either the Doctor had contacted the Galactic Federation, perhaps to ensure that an additional, powerful presence might make the colonists play nicely with the Irrizor, or Gallifrey itself had horned in on the matter.  And since the second option was about as likely as Draconian chick-lit, she was back to the Doctor.  He was meddling away, even after he'd removed himself on the grounds of meddling too much.

"I know what that is," Ace said.  "So they're here to observe?"

"And mediate any dispute."

"We don't have a dispute," Ace said.  _'Yet,'_ she added silently.  Walking around the settlement in the last few days, she'd heard plenty of people talking about how wonderful it was that the Irrizor would be able to get the building work back on schedule.  And she'd heard just as many people talking about how this apparent goodwill could not last, and they should 'remove' the problem of their insect neighbours as soon as possible.

"Not yet," Sykes agreed, echoing her thoughts.  "But right now I need someone who knows how to deal with alien cultures.  I don't even know where to begin."

Ace reviewed her memories of the time she and the Doctor had visited Inter Minor.  It had been too far in the future, she thought, for her contacts to be relevant.  President Zarb, an old friend of the Doctor's, had been working on easing the planet's isolationist philosophy, but she could remember learning that the Inter Minorians had been an active part of galactic society centuries earlier, before some plague had sent them running for their home planet and slamming shut all the doors.

Sykes was still talking.  "He's going to be pissed if I don't get back to him soon.  Damn it, Ace, I came here to manage a human settlement.  Now I got giant-insect neighbours making half my colony hostile.  And I got a blue guy in a scary-impressive spacecraft that's light years ahead of our old fridge-ship-"

"Calm down," Ace said.  "Look, I don't know how much I can help, but I'll talk to him if you want."

He looked at her pleadingly.  "Your problem-solving's been pretty good so far, is all."

"Haven't caught you a killer yet, have I?"

"Maybe not, but we've had two whole days with no new victims.  No one's died since you came up with the Safety Net."

Ace narrowed her eyes and told a lie.  "That was Pirks's idea."

"Yeah, sure it was."  Sykes cracked a half-smile.  "Pirks is an abrasive guy, there's no doubt.  But he isn't so much of an asshole as all that.  He told the council it was your thinking, and he supported you."

This came as something of a surprise.  "Oh," was all Ace could manage.

"Yeah.  Oh.  So quit telling lies to your favourite councillor and just talk to the blue guy for me, will you, Ace?"

"Fine," Ace said, pleased by Sykes's faith in her, almost in spite of herself.  She sat down in front of the comms screen and activated the channel which had been placed on stand-by.

A face, irritated and arrogant, peered at her from the screen.  "About time!" it snapped at her.  Yup - blue-grey skin, weird monkish bald patch, aquiline nose and attitude problem.  Typical Inter Minorian.

"Hi," she said brightly.  "I'm Ace.  How can I help?"

~~~

 

_Settlement Alpha_

_Day Seven_  
_7:50 am_

 

"Look, Boy Scout - is there something wrong?" Ace asked.

Carson frowned at her.  "What do you mean?"

"I mean, you've been in a weird mood for days."

"Have I?"

"It's like Jekyll and Hyde.  I never know which Carson I'm going to get!"

"Is this because I don't want to come and meet your insect buddies?  Might surprise you, Ace - I'm not the only person here, doesn't want to get friendly with something that can read your mind."

He had a point.  The Galactic Federation people were setting up a framework for negotiations, such that the humans no longer felt like they were at a disadvantage.  Even so, half the council had come up with excuses for why they couldn't be present at the talks, and all because they were scared that their penchant for pink fluffy handcuffs would be revealed.  Or whatever.

Ace sighed.  "It's not that.  And it's no big deal.  We were just having fun here, right?  Passing the time.  If you want to move on, fine.  We'll shake hands, wish each other well-"

Carson looked outraged.  "You're finishing with me?"

Ace laughed.  She couldn't help it.  "Um, to do that we'd need to be in a relationship.  And we're really not, are we?  We're just mates."

"Fine," he bit.  "Go back to your own cabin.  Good luck sleeping there, nights."

Ace hadn't known a restful sleep in days, and had already decided that she'd find somewhere quiet in the Hub to get her head down for a few hours later.  "Don't be like that," she said.  "Look - I've got to head out.  Maybe we'll get together in a day or two, yeah?  Have a beer.  How does that sound?"

"Don't go out of your way."  He turned away from her, busying himself at the sink in his tiny kitchen.  Dismissing her.

Ace rolled her eyes at his back and left.

~~~

 

_Western plateau_

_Day Seven_  
_9:20 am_

 

A canopied area had been erected close to the entrance to the Irrizor caverns.  The Irrizor ambassador greeted Ace with genuine pleasure, which didn't go unnoticed by Zak Porinaz, the Inter Minorian arbitrator.

Councillor Sykes was there, of course, plus the single other councillor who was happy to engage, and a few other representatives for the colonists who had never been elected to office but who actually did useful and relevant jobs.  They'd all been given communicator discs by Porinaz: standard issue in the Galactic Federation for dealing with telepathic races.  The discs rested on the forehead of the user.  They eased telepathic communications with non-vocal species, and ensured that only those thoughts the user intended to convey could be read.

The Galactic Federation were less bossy than Ace had expected.  She'd anticipated a hard sell for Colonis to join this Federation, but they didn't seem bothered about that; they just wanted to make sure that war didn't break out between the human settlers and the indigenous Irrizor.  When Ace asked - quite bluntly - why the Galactic Federation even cared, she was informed that there were four other Federation-affiliated planets in star systems nearby, and all were concerned that aggression on Colonis would eventually lead to aggression directed elsewhere.

It was, she realised, a lesson in galactic social values.  The Irrizor had no ambition to leave the planet, but they had learned that they got first dibs.  And humanity, having stretched its wings outside its own solar system, was being taught that there was not only a correct way to behave when dealing with alien races, but that there were mechanisms in place to ensure that bad behaviour was punished.

The discussions turned to the destruction of Colonis's landscape: shuttle-ports and quarries and industry.  When Sykes tried to explain that the colony hadn't been aware of the Irrizor's presence, he was told, effectively, that ignorance of the law was no excuse for breaking the law.  Porinaz seemed set on painting humanity as out-and-out bad-guys.  Sykes began to get uncharacteristically fractious.

Ace knew she needed to intervene, but she didn't know how.  Diplomatic negotiations were not part of her skill set.  Her comfort zone involved baseball bats and explosives.  They weren't going to help here.

What would the Doctor do?

No, bollocks to that.  She couldn't spend the rest of her life trying to be someone she was not.  Everything else besides, she needed to learn how to stop missing him; thinking about him all the time was not going to make that any easier.

So: what does _Ace_ do?

She thought about what was happening.  The Irrizor were getting the benefit of the doubt.  Fair enough.  It was their planet.  It was only right that they got to feel safe and unthreatened in their own home-

Oh.

Ace frowned at herself.  Maybe, as it turned out, she was better at the thinking stuff than she'd realised.  But an idea had occurred.

"Hold up," Ace said.  "I've got a question."

"One recognises Ace McShane," Porinaz declared.  Snooty git.

"You guys show up to make sure no one oversteps the mark, right?" she said.

"When we can," Porinaz agreed.

"So how come Earth, over the last three hundred years, has known several attempted invasions - including a pretty unmissable Dalek one - and yet the Galactic Federation was conspicuous only by its absence?"

Porinaz frowned and looked down his nose at her.  "The Sol system escaped our attention until now.  The inhabitants of Sol-3 did not venture beyond their own system."

"Yeah.  The monsters came to us.  That's kind of the definition of invasion."

"One regrets to inform Ace McShane - we cannot be everywhere," Porinaz said.  Admittedly looking sheepish.

Ace briefly caught Sykes's eye.  He looked like he wanted to kiss her, or arrange a parade in her honour, or something.

"Well," she said cheerfully.  "Let's embrace the fact that you're here, and ready to make up for that failure by helping us right now."  While Porinaz was still blinking at her, she turned to the Irrizor ambassador.  "Councillor Sykes's proposal to re-plant the tzikallay forest in the shelter of the western edge of the plateau - how does that grab you?"

Ambassador Ace.  Who'd have thought it?

~~~

 

_Settlement Alpha_

_Day Seven_  
_4:30 pm_

 

When the negotiations had drawn to a close, Ace headed back to the Hub with Sykes.  Outside the building she was waylaid by a smiling Carson.

"Hi," he greeted her, as if his earlier sulking hadn't even happened.  "How did it go?"

Ace felt uncomfortable.  She hadn't realised how much of a relief her earlier decision to cut those intimate ties had been.  Everything else besides, she wasn't stupid.  She knew she'd kind of latched on to Carson simply for the sake of having someone to hang round with.  Recognising this did not fill her with any great sense of pride.

"It went well," she said.  "Everyone seems happy with the proposals."

"Great."  He indicated a nearby coffee stand.  "Want a drink?  They've relaxed the rationing, now all the idiots are in custody."

"No thanks.  Look - like I said earlier, let's just leave things for a day or two, okay?"

Carson hesitated.  "Right.  Yes, sorry."  He frowned at himself.  "I mean, I didn't realise - anyway.  I'll, er - have a good day, Ace."

He walked away.  Ace shook her head and went into the Hub.

She took off her Ambassador hat and replaced it with her Enforcer hat, so to speak.  Things were quietly ticking over in the taskforce room.  For whatever reason, maybe the Safety Net precautions, the serial killer had gone to ground.  The newest information they had came from the killer's most recent victims: the mother and daughter who'd survived the killer's third assault.  They had, alas, been unable to offer a description of their assailant beyond a recollection that they'd been attacked by 'a monster'.

Ace and her team knew that it was only a matter of time before the killer got his confidence back.  He'd find a way around the precautions, or he'd just leave it a few more days: long enough for people to get bored with the rules and to start ignoring them.  Or he'd define a new approach to his killings: something that rendered the precautions useless.

Something would happen soon.  It was inevitable.

She stripped off her jacket and checked the dedicated comms feed for the taskforce.  "Anything new?" she called to the enforcers still working the evidence trails.

"Yes," Enforcer Chauhan said.

"No!" Enforcer Keenan said.  "Nothing sane, anyway.  You shouldn't listen to him, Ace."

"Oh go on," Chauhan said.  "Humour the mental.  Please."

Ace looked at what Chauhan seemed to be doing.  "Oh, god, seriously, mate?  You're going over that _again_?"

Chauhan was still analysing every fraction of a second, every pixel, of the video surveillance footage.  "Thought I'd missed something.  And it's the best evidence we've got."

"So did you miss something?  'Cause it's sort of hard to believe, after the two hundredth run through."

"You can always miss something if you aren't looking in the right place."

Keenan tossed her hair out of her eyes and tut-tutted on the other side of the room.  "Or you can always see things that aren't really there.  If you start acting like a chem-head."

"Just - bear with me," Chauhan said.

Ace settled in a chair beside Chauhan.  "Okay, Dav.  Bearing with you."

"Last couple of days," he said, "when I haven't been on other duties, I've been going through this with a different attitude."  He lined up some footage on his data-screen.  "Okay.  So we've already polygraphed and DNA-tested every resident of 7D."

"I remember."  There were still people grumbling about their right to privacy.  Ace sighed.  "We needed to be able to rule out the people on camera who had a perfect right to be there."

"Exactly.  And no one in 7D matched the DNA evidence, and no one even made us suspicious."

"Which was disappointing," Ace acknowledged.

"And every single time we apply facial-recognition software, however we set the parameters, we find that no one went beyond the 7D checkpoint who wasn't supposed to be there."

"Agreed."

"So that's why I've been coming back to this footage with a new idea."

"That being?"

"Whoever our killer is - they've been hiding in plain sight."

"You're assuming they're on camera."

"Yes.  I mean, if they're invisible our job is quite a bit harder," Chauhan said.

"Fair point.  Okay, let's run with that.  The killer's on this footage somewhere.  Which means they've got some way to fool the DNA test.  And the polygraphs."

"I haven't crossed that bridge, yet.  I just wanted to review the footage without presuming that the residents we've already cleared weren't worthy of a closer look."

Ace shrugged.  "Okay."

Chauhan started with footage from the day of the first murder: Silja Schacht, killed in her cabin while Ace was in a giant insect's cocoon and Silja's daughter Doriel was off somewhere, sulking at the injustice of being a child.

"This guy," he pointed out.  An Asian man was walking down the path away from the checkpoint, alongside another bloke who was blonde and almost a foot taller.  "He's called Leonard Ki.  Lives with his husband - that guy beside him - four doors down from you, Ace."

"Okay."

"This is at 5:34 pm - you can see the timestamp."

"That's quite a bit earlier than the murder."

"It is.  For the record, it's only two minutes after you and your husband left the sector."

Ace cast her mind back, to get a sense of the context.  There'd been that unnerved reaction to a double bed, and the decision to go for a walk and say hi to the natives.  Back when Ace had been one half of a partnership.  It all seemed a very long time ago.

Chauhan was focused on the data-screen.  "Now, watch this.  8:02 pm..."

Ace watched the screen, which went into a slow frame-by-frame advance then paused.  Chauhan used some software to rotate the shot, and zoomed in.  He lined up the image next to the original of Ki.

It took her a few moments before she was confident enough to acknowledge, "Same bloke."

"Yes!" Chauhan crowed, apparently to Keenan.

"Yeah, but so what?  He arrived at half five.  Nipped out somewhere in the meantime.  Came back just after shift change."

"Except he doesn't leave after arriving the first time."

"He must have," Ace said.  "You just missed it."

"No he didn't.  Trust me.  I've gone through it second by second.  And his witness statement confirms it.  He said in his interview that he and his husband got to the cabin after they'd registered for their work, some time before six pm.  They did not leave the cabin subsequently.  Not until the morning."

Ace frowned at the Leonard Ki who was walking the path at eight o'clock.  "Okay, that's weird."

"Yes."

"Could he have forgotten about leaving?  Black-out?  Amnesia?"  Ace shrugged and went for Occam's Razor.  "Slipped his mind?"

"I don't know about that, but I know that if he left 7D it wasn't via the checkpoint camera."

"Okay.  I suppose he'd lie about his movements if there was something fishy was going on."

"Fishy...or leechy," Keenan pointed out.  Leeches having become something of an in-joke between the three of them.

"Or leechy," Ace agreed.  "I take it Leonard doesn't have a twin brother in the settlement?"

"No.  It's not that either.  He just arrives _twice_.  Like he's got an escape tunnel in his cabin or something."

"Fine.  If we're going to point the finger at Leonard Ki then we need more.  Is his face on the footage from the other attacks?"

Chauhan grimaced and looked at his data-screen.  "Not exactly."

"Warning," Keenan called from across the room.  "This is where Dav's theory gets sticky."

Chauhan shot her a dark look then opened up another set of images.  "I've got nothing for the next murders except this."  He lined up the footage relevant to the murder of the second set of victims: Marcus Rossi and his daughter, Renata: the dead girl with Ace's name carved into her skin.

Ace watched.  After a few moments someone walked down the path.  A familiar someone.  Someone with every right - technically, at least - to be there.

The Doctor.  Definitely the Doctor.  Without his hat, and wearing the ubiquitous colony-issue coveralls, but the face and build and gait were unmistakable.

"What time is this?" she demanded.

"Two hours before the time of the murder.  Timestamp is 5:37 pm."

Which explained why Ace hadn't seen or processed this footage before now: she'd restricted her own analysis to an hour either side of the time of death.

She shook her head, confused.  "He'd been up on the liner for six hours by then."

"I know."  Chauhan looked sheepish.  "It didn't register with me, either.  Not for ages.  I'd taken you and your husband out of the search parameters, you see.  It was only when I went back to doing it the old-fashioned way I remembered he'd taken Doriel up to the ship."  He shot Ace an apologetic look.  "Anyway, I, um, checked.  You know.  Dotting the i's, crossing the t's?"

"Course you did," Ace acknowledged.

"I mean, since the younger victim had your name..."  Chauhan winced.  "It kind of fitted, didn't it?  That the murderer might have some connection to you."

Ace frowned down at her clasped hands.  "I've been assuming the murderer heard me introduce myself to the crowd, that first morning I was here.  When I was trying to get a search started for Doriel."

"Maybe," Chauhan said, unconvinced.

"So anyway.  You checked on the Doctor.  And you found that he arrived at the ship when he was supposed to," Ace said, trying to sound confident.  Even though she had just a smidgen of suspicion that, while the Doctor was by no means a psychotic murderer, he had never left the planet after all.  Or he'd left it long enough to collect the TARDIS, nip off on a few errands, then land somewhere out of sight to continue his meddlesome impression of the Great and Powerful Oz.

"He did."  Chauhan opened an email and scanned the details.  "He shuttled up there late morning, the day after the first murder.  That afternoon he fixed the air-filtration system for the hydroponics hold.  Then he repaired and recommissioned a burned-out manoeuvring thruster on the port side.  Captain Crozier had dinner with him and Doriel that evening."  Chauhan pointed at the figure on the paused video footage.  "There is no possible way that could be the Doctor.  And yet there he is."

"Weird," Ace said.  Of course, the Doctor _could_ be in two places at once thanks to the TARDIS, but the change of clothing was oddly out of character.  "Okay, well, if that's a killer wearing a Doctor-wig, they aren't half arriving early."

"True.  We know the assault couldn't have begun until after 6:45 pm - that's when Rossi came home.  We've got him on camera arriving with his daughter."  Chauhan shrugged.  "So this guy here - if we figure him for the killer in disguise, I suppose he might have been...waiting?"

"For over an hour?  Oh, god, did he go in my cabin?" Ace asked.  She'd barely been back there for more than clean clothes in the last five days.  It was increasingly tempting to pledge never to set foot in the damn place again.

"No.  Your lock wasn't activated at any point between lunchtime that day and about eight the next morning."  Chauhan coughed discreetly, presumably to inform the room that he was casting no judgement on the fact that a married woman was apparently failing to sleep in her own bed.

Ace was too focused on the investigation to care about social proprieties.  "Okay, that's something I s'pose.  So if this guy's up to no good, he had over an hour to wait before he could even knock on his victim's door.  Where would he have waited?  Could he have got in to Rossi's cabin?"

"Not through the door.  The lock records when it's activated.  And there was no sign of forced entry through the door, window or roof panels."

"But there's nowhere to hide along that path," Ace said.  It was very annoying that the camera footage only covered the few metres beyond the checkpoint and not the whole of the path.  "He couldn't have just stood there for an hour.  Could he?"

"Perhaps," Chauhan said.  "If people thought he had a right to be there.  But the main point is that he _couldn't_ have been there.  Not the Doctor."

Ace looked at the freeze-framed image.  "And yet."

Chauhan nodded agreement.  "And yet."  He moved on.  "Okay, lastly - there's this."  He set up the footage for the assault that had, thank goodness, failed, on the same day that Ace had worked with Councillor Sykes to introduce the colony to its insect neighbours.  "So the assault happens a little earlier in the day this time, but we have the same thing as with Leonard Ki.  This guy's your next door neighbour.  Leroy Harris."

He indicated an individual walking down the path away from the checkpoint.  Once Harris had disappeared from the camera's frame, Chauhan kept the footage rolling but at a faster speed.  The path was quiet for about ten minutes, then Chauhan switched to standard playback just before another person walked in the other direction, towards the checkpoint.  He waited long enough for Ace to note that this person was a female in her mid-forties.  Then he sped up the footage again and kept it playing.  He only returned it to normal speed twenty-six minutes later, at the point when a male entered the pathway from the checkpoint side, and walked towards the cabins.

"Leroy Harris again," Ace murmured, when Chauhan had paused the image.

"Yes."

"He definitely doesn't leave 7D in the meantime?"

"Did you see him?"

"No."

Chauhan sighed.  "Ace, I promise you - I've been over this frame by frame, trying to explain these anomalies."

"I believe you."

Dav Chauhan was, Ace had come to realise, nothing but conscientious in his work.  He wouldn't be flagging this if he wasn't sure.  She thought about this evidence.

"So we've got three people entering 7D before the assaults.  Three people who can't possibly be there, because we know they are somewhere else."

"Yes," Chauhan said.

Three glitches in the surveillance recordings?  All happening in the hours before a crime took place?

Not a chance.

"Oh my god," Ace murmured, as a number of fractured, spinning ideas in her mind slammed together into a suddenly coherent picture.  The implications chilled her to the bone, because they immediately explained a whole load of other things that had been bothering her.

"Yes indeed," Chauhan agreed.

"That's why they said it was a monster," Ace realised.  "It probably was.  At the time.  God, it could have been anything."

"Yes."

"That's why the DNA isn't human.  That's probably how they do the leech thing."

Chauhan was nodding at her.

"A shapeshifter," Ace said.

"Yes," Chauhan agreed.

After days and days of evidence-trawling they had a working theory.  And all they'd needed to do, in order to make the pieces fit, was to disregard the laws of physics.

"Goddess!" Keenan yelled.  "You as well?  Am I the only sane person in this room?"

~~~

 

_Settlement Alpha_

_Day Seven_  
_7:45 pm_

 

Councillor Sykes looked up from his desk as Ace stalked into the office followed by Chauhan and Keenan.

"Ace."  He smiled welcome for a moment, then he frowned and glanced at the time.  "Problem?"

"Solution," she corrected.  "I hope."  Ace drew a deep breath.  "I think I know how to identify our killer."

"What do you need?" Sykes asked, straightening up.

"Basically, I need you to trust me."

"All right," he said a touch cautiously.

"Okay.  I need these two."  She gestured to the enforcers.  "I need access to a transporter.  I need some personnel around the settlement shunting about.  And I need to do all this without having to go through the usual channels.  No one but the people in this room can know what we're up to.  This includes the council.  This includes Chief Enforcer Pirks."

"Wow.  Okay.  Why?"

Fair question.  Instead of answering, Ace turned to the man sitting quietly at the corner of Sykes's desk with data-tablet poised: Shah Akasella, the admin assistant who had been so thrown by her questions about the Doctor's parcel.  Back when she'd felt like a visitor, rather than a colonist.

"Evening, Shah," she said.

"Good evening."

"Question for you."

"Yes?"

"In the last seven days can you remember thinking that the councillor wasn't acting like himself?"

Sykes said, "What?"

Shah said, "Um."

Ace rolled her eyes.  "Simple question.  Has he done anything out of character?  Mood swings?  Forgotten something you'd only told him recently?  Gone awol?"

Shah looked outraged.  "Councillor Sykes would hardly be able to do his job if he acted like that."

"I can take that as a 'no', then?" Ace asked.

"No!  I mean, yes.  Yes, you can take it as a 'no'."  Shah looked very annoyed that Ace was managing to confuse him all over again.  "There have been no changes in the councillor's behaviour."

"Good."  She turned to Sykes.  "And Shah, here.  Any changes?"

"No," Sykes said carefully.  "Same old Shah.  Constant as always."

Ace looked around at Keenan and Chauhan, and they shared a nod.  It was the best they could do.

"Right then," she said.  "I realise I'm asking a lot, here, but this is what we need."

~~~


	7. Chapter 7

_Settlement Alpha_

_Day Eight_  
_12:45 am_

 

It was the early hours of the morning, and the skies of Colonis were surprisingly cloudless and brightly lit by the planet's twin moons.  Ace walked the pathways of the settlement, alone but not alone, feeling edgy and afraid.

They'd already been to the Irrizor caverns and back again, the three of them.  Her little crew.  They'd set up everything they could.  Now all they could do was bait the trap.

Ace was the bait.

The secrecy was necessary.  Sykes had agreed.  While she and her companions hunted a killer that could look like anyone or anything, it was impossible to know whom to trust.  Better to work on a need-to-know basis.

On a more personal level for Ace, the secrecy made things easier.  When your prime suspect in three murders and two attempted murders happens to be the bloke you've been sleeping with, the danger-factor is given a genuine run for its money by the mortification-factor.

Jekyll and Hyde.  Carson's personality that changed with the time of day.  Carson showing up outside his cabin when she hadn't heard the door open.  Carson forgetting things she'd told him only hours earlier.  Carson immediately pointing the finger at the Doctor as a suspect in the second murder, after the killer had faked the Doctor's face and body on the surveillance footage.  Carson's anger, once he'd heard that the Doctor and Doriel had left the surface of Colonis.

Ace knew she'd been an idiot.  But she was not a blind idiot.

It was going to be about the knife.  Whatever finally pointed to the truth, it was going to be about that silver engraved penknife; she was sure of that.  A shapeshifter could copy a form, but they'd struggle to copy accessories.  Surely.  So that left her with three possibilities.

One: she was being paranoid, and Carson was Carson: just a bloke prone to mood swings.

Two: Carson the socially-awkward human with the penknife had been copied by the murderer in order to use Carson's connection to Ace to manipulate events.

Three: Carson with the penknife was a murderous shape-changing alien.  (But prone to mood-swings.)

The question she did not know the answer to was this: who the hell was Anders Smit, of the long, straggly hair?  He had not been seen anywhere in the settlement for a week.  If his face and personal details hadn't been logged into the computer system, Ace might have started to wonder whether she'd hallucinated the bloke.  Had he been another victim of their serial killer: a victim whose body had lain undiscovered for a week, now?  Or was this another face worn by their chameleon killer?  A face that had been discarded as unusable, after Ace had seen and recognised it at the 7D checkpoint?

Ace wondered whether the Doctor spent his adventures as confused as she was, and if so, how he'd learned to hide it so well-

From her left came a sound: a squeal.

Ace spun, adrenaline spiking, hand reaching under her jacket for the illegal stun-gun she carried.  She peered through the light afforded by the moons and the settlement's standing lights, and noted a couple of twenty-something women heading down an adjacent pathway, arms around each other, hands wandering, a little drunk and ready for some fun.  Ace breathed the tension out.  She stood and watched until the women had reached their destination and made their way inside, safe and sound.

She hoped Keenan and Chauhan were doing a good job of staying close enough to watch _her_ , without getting so close that they'd frighten the killer off.  Keenan had offered her a stun-rifle, just in case she'd needed more immediate protection.  Ace had declined, though she had confided to her two colleagues that she already had her own more discreet weapon available.  It said something about their team-vibe, Ace thought, that neither of the enforcers had been remotely interested in reporting the presence of an illegal weapon on Colonis to Chief Enforcer Pirks.

Ace was on the outskirts of sector 4 now: an area allocated for single occupancy residences.  Carson's cabin was in 4A.  She recalled those few nights of not-quite-good-enough-to-call-average sex.  Then she almost laughed - a laugh that would have been tinged with hysteria - as she wondered why a shapeshifting alien would give himself such an ordinary, unimpressive body.  She hadn't met a single human male who, given shape-changing abilities, would have overlooked the chance to add an inch or two to the old trouser-snake.

She told herself to remember that her bed-partner of the last few nights might yet have been an ordinary human with no psychotic tendencies.  But there was a part of her that knew, with a ferocious certainty, that managing to bed the serial killer in a colony of forty thousand was just the kind of stupid bloody choice Dorothy McShane would make.

Ace paused under the sector 4A banner, then turned to the junction that would take her down the pathway to Carson's cabin.  She felt a growing sense of helplessness.  She'd been hoping that Carson - one of the Carsons, at least - would do his showing-up-out-of-the-blue thing.  She wanted it to happen outside, where her two hidden friends would see him.  Now it looked like she was going to have to convince him to step out of his cabin in the middle of the night, because there wasn't a chance in hell she was setting foot in there; not even armed.  Ace was neither quite that gung-ho nor quite that stupid any more.

She was within three doors of Carson's place when a voice behind her spoke her name, and her sense of relief warred chaotically with her terror.

"Were you coming to see me?" Carson added.

She turned around.  In her mind's eye, all she could see was pale skin, dead, bloodied, cut with the jagged letters that made up her own name.  "You made me jump," she said.  It was a reasonable reaction after all, late at night in a colony that sported its very own serial killer.

"Sorry," Carson said.  He stepped closer.  Ace fought herself to keep from stepping back.  "You okay?"

"Long day," she said.  "Weird day."  She sighed and lifted her shoulders: time to go to work.  "Listen, I thought we should talk.  But can we - would it be okay if we don't go inside?  I mean, I'm not assuming that I'd even be welcome, after what I said.  You know."

"It's fine," he said with an easy smile.  Too easy.  "I wasn't assuming you'd want to, anyway."  He gestured back to the main track.  "The shebeen over by the southern transport station is open till four.  Drink?"

"Okay," Ace agreed.  She only needed to manoeuvre him to where he'd be within range of Keenan's stun-rifle.

They walked side by side, not too close.  There was no enforcer at the checkpoint up ahead, but that wasn't unusual for this sector; twenty-four hour protection was focused on the family units.

"So why's it been a weird day?" Carson asked.

"Too much happening at once," she said.  This was not an inaccurate statement.  "Managed to get the cement-works people on-side with the Irrizor.  At least, the ones that are left.  The people who refused to work with giant insects have been reassigned."

Carson grunted an understanding grunt.

Ace felt the need to keep talking.  "Nearly there with the botanists too; actually they've been easier to persuade.  They _want_ the local knowledge the Irrizor can offer."

"Maybe botanists don't keep as many secrets?" Carson suggested.  "Or is it not the mind-reading thing?"

"Bit of that," Ace said.  They passed the empty checkpoint.  She had to force herself not to cast about, looking for Chauhan and Keenan.  "You told me earlier _you_ weren't comfortable with the telepathy, though."

Carson hesitated.  And in hindsight, Ace would come to realise that this moment, this very moment, was the moment she acknowledged there was nothing paranoid about her suspicions at all.  Her brief time on Colonis had involved two separate Carsons.

Carson said, "I was in a bad mood earlier.  Sorry."

They were on the main track.  The moons shone with convenient brightness.  The rest of the colony was quiet, and would be for another hour until the distant cement-works shift changed.

Heart pounding hard, Ace stopped.  It took Carson a couple of steps before he turned to see what she was doing.  She made sure she was completely focused on examining her thumb.

"Ace?"

"Damn it," she said.  "Thought I'd done something to myself."  She glanced up.  "Splinter.  Must have done it at the nursery earlier."

"Let me see-"

"Nothing to see.  It's under the skin.  I can feel it."  She looked up.  "Can I borrow your penknife for a tick?"

Her eyes held his.  Carson blinked.  Then he dug in his pocket.  Ace watched, confused, not sure what she was expecting.  All her theories were getting tangled in her head.

Then Carson said, "Oh, hang on, I don't have it."  The tangled theories began to unravel.  "I hid it back at the cabin.  Didn't want to get caught with it."

He looked at her too steadily.  Watching.  Nervous.  Waiting.

"Okay," Ace said carefully.  "Well, since we're here, would you mind popping back for it?"

They continued to stare at each other.  The moment stretched, and stretched...

With a horrifying blur of flesh and light, Carson stopped being Carson.  His whole face and form shifted, like wax melting and running and finding a new shape, except it defied gravity as it did so.  And though she'd been prepared, Ace found herself watching with an open mouth rather than reaching for the stun-gun holstered under her jacket.

The new face solidified.  Long, straggly hair covered much of it.  Dark eyes smouldered at her, even as newly broadened shoulders moved with panted breaths.

"You," Ace whispered.  She finally remembered herself and began to reach for her gun.

Anders Smit shook his head.  "It's not what you think," he said in a new voice, a stranger's voice.  "Ace, please-"

There was a bluish discharge of energy.  Smit slumped to the ground and was out cold.

Keenan stepped up, still holding her stun-rifle ready to fire, and spared Ace only a cursory glance.  Her attention was firmly on their prey.  Chauhan, eyes wide, was just behind her.

"You got him," Chauhan breathed.  "Did you see that?  He just - he _changed_!"

"You say 'I told you so' and I'll shoot you too, Dav," Keenan said.

~~~

 

_Foundations of Colonia City, north of Settlement Alpha_

_Day Eight_  
_2:10 am_

 

The first building blocks of Colonis's inaugural city took the form of large, smooth slabs of concrete, of earthen trenches and braided steelwork.  In the moonlight the shapes looked nightmarish, all spikes and angles.  Perhaps, Ace considered, she was just in a spiky mood.

There were, presently, only a handful of buildings that had seen construction beyond their groundworks.  They surrounded an open, central space that would eventually contain paths and grass and probably some coffee houses, but was currently just so much muddy earth.  Ace parked the transporter and disembarked.  She strode up to one building, its sub-levels and ground storey intact, steel and polymer girders reaching up higher ready for the next layer.  Behind her, Keenan and Chauhan carried Anders Smit between them.

Keenan had been all for finishing this alien interloper off.  Chauhan had been too interested in learning the whys and wherefores to support execution-style justice.  Ace ruled against cold-blooded murder, because she needed to be sure she was getting the decision right.

Although the various services to the new buildings were far from complete, there was a basic power infrastructure serving the new city.  So when Ace strapped on her headband with the communication device and called, "Anyone home?" as they entered the building chosen for this rendezvous, she was brought up short with a burst of light.

She blinked the water out of her eyes and let them adjust.  Within the roomy and cavern-cool entrance hall three powerful halogen lights had been activated by the individuals awaiting them.

[Greetings, Ace,] the ambassador sent.  The giant insect looked impressive, back-lit against the plain concrete wall.  [You were successful in your hunt.]

"Hiya," she said, trying to sound like she did this kind of thing all the time, knowing that the ambassador wouldn't be fooled for a second.  "Yes, we have our suspect.  Did you bring your friend?"

The ambassador moved slowly to one side, having learned earlier to avoid scuttling in the presence of an armed and jumpy Enforcer Keenan.  Behind the ambassador another hive member crept forward, cautious, tremulous, clearly terrified of the weird-looking animals it was having to deal with.

[This one's brother is trained to monitor the air,] the ambassador said.

Ace nodded and moved closer.  She tried to make herself unthreatening.  "Hi there," she said to the new hive member.  "I'm Ace.  Thanks for helping us out."

The hive member rubbed his top two legs together and lowered his head.  Ace noted that his antennae were more developed than the ambassador's.

[Helping - good.  Friendship - good.  No conflict.]

Ace nodded.  "Couldn't agree more, mate."

Keenan and Chauhan dropped the comatose Anders Smit to the floor.  Chauhan went back to the doorway and pulled the heavy plastic sheeting that served as a door into place.  He trapped the cover in its clips and then turned to face the lit space.  Ace scanned the rest of the hall.  The internal doorways were already secured with their own covers.

The ambassador shuffled close to the prisoner.  Ace moved to join her with a sense of trepidation; she was damned if all her hard work was going to be ruined by a psychotic murderer leaping up to attack the nearest good guy.

[Ace,] the ambassador said, [this one knows this scent.]

"Yeah?"

[You brought this mammal to the caverns.  When we first met.]

Ace thought back.  "Right.  Carson-one was in his cabin.  This copy - shall we call him Carson-two? - showed up outside.  But he doesn't look like Carson right now.  So that must mean he smells the same to you, whatever form he's in?"

[It would seem so.]

Ace frowned.  "Funny that he came with me that night.  At least one of the Carsons kicked up a fuss about the telepathy thing."

[One who takes lives against the rules of the hive - such a one would surely wish their thoughts to be closed?]

"Yeah."  Ace was trying to remember the information she'd imparted to the original Carson.  She couldn't get any of it straight in her head.  "I take it you can't read him at the moment?"

[He has protection,] the ambassador answered.  [Like that provided by the devices from the Galactic Federation.  But he wears no disk.  His protection is natural.]

"Even unconscious?"

The ambassador's head came up and she looked at Ace, as directly as those multifaceted eyes could manage.  [Your suspect is not unconscious.]

Without a moment's hesitation, Ace stepped between Anders Smit and the ambassador, and drew her stun-gun.  Keenan, watching closely, took her cue from Ace and came into a firing stance with her rifle.  The hive member Ace was thinking of as 'the bloodhound' scuttled back, afraid.  Chauhan readied his rifle but stayed guarding the flimsy doorway.

Anders Smit stirred and said, "Rumbled, I guess."

Ace swallowed.  "Please don't move.  Or shapeshift.  Or do anything that's likely to make us shoot you again."

"Fine," he said gloomily.  "You're going to need me in one piece, anyway."

She frowned.  She hadn't expected a psychotic killer to be so accommodating.

[Ace?] the ambassador prompted.  [You must move away from the suspect so that his scent is not compromised with other scents.]

"Right."  She looked around.  "Keenan - move back to the right of Dav.  Keep Smit covered."  She waited until Keenan had done so.  "Ambassador - if you could head over to the lights there, I'd really like to stay between you and this guy."

[You are protective towards your friends,] the ambassador observed, as she acceded to the request.

"Always," Ace vowed.  With a little bit of room, she stepped clear of Smit's prone form.  She turned to the bloodhound.  "Okay, mate.  You've learned the smell of our bad guy?"

The hive member crept forward.  Perhaps encouraged by the warmth between Ace and his more communicative hive sister, he seemed to lose some anxiety.  In his own broken style, he sent, [Small pieces - bad mammal.  Yes.  This is known.]

"And the sample we gave you - that's enough for you to compare?"

The ambassador put in, [The hive has experimented, Ace.  You injured yourself, the same night we first talked.  You left a cloth with your blood in the cavern.  This one's brother has learned how the small pieces relate to the scent of the being entire.  The connection is unmistakable, for one trained as he.]

"Okay, good.  That's good.  And also sorry.  For, you know, littering.  I forgot about bleeding all over your foyer."

The ambassador's head lowered with acceptance, and a brief wave of amusement that had, in recent days, become familiar, coloured their link.

The bloodhound stepped closer to Smit.  It seemed that the skin and blood cells Dr Bala had retrieved from under Silja Schacht's fingernails were about to prove invaluable.  The hive member's antennae waggled and twitched as he assessed the scent of their suspect.

Then he stepped back again.

"Well?" Ace demanded.

[Not the same.  No.]

"What!"

"What is it?" Keenan asked tensely.

"Apparently, this is not the shape-changing psycho we're looking for," Ace replied.

"Told you it isn't what you think," Anders Smit said.  "You need an ally.  And so do I.  Can I sit up, now?  This floor is really not comfy."

~~~

 

 _Day Eight_  
_3:00 am_

 

Desmond Sykes looked from Smit to Ace, then back again.

"Two of them," the councillor said.  To his credit, he'd come straight away, even in this cold, grey hour before dawn.

"Yup," Ace said.

"And this one's an enforcer?"

Smit said, "A sweeper, actually."  He shrugged at Sykes's cold stare.  "It's what they call me.  I sweep up the mess.  Before it gets, you know.  Trodden in."

"Shut up, Anders," Ace put in.  "Listen - from what I can tell, this race of shapeshifters-"

"Metamorphs."  Smit looked stubborn.  "We prefer 'metamorphs'.  And we're called the Metaskya.  You want me to go round calling you 'this race of fleshy bipeds'?"

" _Shut up_ , Anders.  Don't make me say it again."  Smit raised his hands in mock-surrender.  Ace turned back to Sykes.  "The Metaskya are secretive."  She sensed Smit stirring, and without looking at him she pointed his way and said, "Yeah, I know.  Just let me do this."  She sighed.  "They're secretive because, in the past, other races have reacted badly to a species that can make itself look like them."

"Not kidding," Sykes said.  "That's a serious advantage in any kind of conflict."

"Right."  Ace ignored the way Anders did a very human tut-tut over by the wall.  "Except, of course, that the shape-changing thing - it's just who they are.  They evolved on a world with some nasty predators.  To survive, their chameleon skills developed until the ability to mimic the non-tasty animals of the landscape became, well, pretty much absolute."

Smit muttered, "Millions of years of evolution in two sentences..."

"You understand I'm giving you the bullet-points here," Ace said, trying not to smirk.

"Gotcha," said Sykes.

"So anyway, they're secretive.  Which means the Metaskya are not happy bunnies when one of their own goes rogue.  It brings them attention that they really don't want.  Which is what Carson has done."

Sykes nodded.  "And times like these, they send this sweeper guy to clean up the mess."

"Yup."

Sykes turned to Smit.  "So what's stopping you?  Forgot your broom?"

Smit gave a half-smile, but the expression was sneering.  "There's rules for how I go about my business," he said.  "Rule number one is that I don't make things worse."

"Your fellow 'metamorph' has been murdering people!" Sykes snapped.  "How is that not worse?"

Smit rolled his eyes.  "Worse for the Metaskya, you narrow-minded idiot!  Sorry to disappoint you, Councillor, but my job is not to protect human beings - that's _your_ job.  My job is to make sure the actions of this rogue don't bring unwanted attention to my people.  We get persecution enough without some new species deciding to make us their number one enemy."

In the corner, the Irrizor ambassador shifted her weight.  She'd remained silent since sending her hive brother home, though Ace remained aware of her presence through the communication device she still wore.  The ambassador empathised with the Metaskya's need to remain unobtrusive.  The hive had done the same, after all, as soon as the humans had arrived on Colonis.

Sykes had bristled at Smit's words, but he was too good at his job to fail to acknowledge that Smit's viewpoint was different to his own.  "So you have to sweep up without revealing your super-powers."

"Rule number one," said Smit with a nod.

Sykes arched a brow.  "Well, you know what?  I think you might have been spotted.  So it looks like you failed.  Kind of badly."

 _Ouch_.  And that, Ace thought, made it one-all.

"Looks like I did," Smit acceded.

Sykes sighed.  "How did you even end up here?"

"I tracked the rogue to Earth.  He murdered there too.  Stole that shiny penknife off one of his victims," Smit said, glancing at Ace.  "Nice lady called Sophia Carson."  Ace swallowed bile with the memory of how she'd held and admired that lethal blade.  "When he realised I was on his trail he blinked out.  Turned up on the passenger liner to Colonis.  I'd have missed the trail if he hadn't used the name of his last victim."

Ace frowned.  "Blinked out?"

"Easy to do when you can morph.  One minute you're a human-shaped male with an apartment and an income and a penchant for cutting up parents and their kids.  Next minute you're jumping in the ocean and making like a shark.  Or scuttling down a storm-drain in the form of a hundred brown rats-"

"A hundred?"

"It's a body-mass thing."

"Oh."

"Look, can we move this on?"  Smit sat up straighter against the wall where Keenan kept him in her stun-rifle sights.  "I've been waiting a long time for the chance to deal with this rogue.  I thought I had him that first night, when he followed Ace and the Doctor to those caves.  But he spotted me and high-tailed it back to the settlement.  Took the form of a treshaki - think cheetah, but more stamina.  By the time I'd got back to the settlement after him, he'd already killed that woman.  I don't know where he went after that."

"He went back to the caves," Ace said wearily.  "Rescued me from a cocoon and gave himself an alibi in the process, because it didn't occur to me that someone might be able to run from the settlement to the plateau in less than twenty minutes."

"Right."  Smit shot her a look that seemed sympathetic.  "I waited all night at his cabin.  But he didn't go there.  He wasn't stupid - he knew I was on to him.  So I hung around where you were staying, Ace.  Picked him up the next morning."

"I saw you," she said.  "In the crowd, when we were looking for Doriel."

"Yeah.  Oh, he'll be pissed off about Doriel," Smit said, nodding.  "First time he missed one.  Anyway.  He got himself all friendly with Ace.  I tried to stay with him, but he lost me that afternoon.  Killed the next two.  Next chance I had to pick him up was that night, but he, uh, didn't go home alone."

"No," Ace said, sighing the word out hard.

There was an awkward pause.  Keenan and Chauhan were courteously silent, in spite of their advanced knowledge.

Sykes worked it out and said, incredulously, "You and this guy?"

"Yes," she confessed.

"But..."  The councillor looked less angry and more disappointed.  Just like the Doctor would have done.  "I thought-"

She closed her eyes.  "I'm not married.  Me and the Doctor just pretended.  And yes, my judgement is beyond hopeless."  She opened her eyes and looked straight at Sykes.  "How's my problem-solving looking, now?"

Another awkward pause.  Chauhan cleared his throat, as if he needed to break the silence.

Then Sykes huffed and said, "Okay.  Done is done, and all that.  I think I get the picture.  So how do we resolve this situation?"

Smit pushed his hair back behind his ears and said, "Minute he knows we're on to him, he'll blink out."

The Irrizor ambassador stirred and sent, [Could the Galactic Federation assist in capturing this killer?]

Ace thought that was a notion worth pursuing, but Smit surged to his feet and shouted, "No!"

Sykes looked between the ambassador and the shape-changer.  "Um - something about the Galactic Feds?"

Ace stepped in.  "The ambassador suggested Porinaz might be able to assist.  Anders seems to object."

Smit glanced at Keenan as she waved her rifle at him, then he deliberately ignored her.  He spoke to Ace rather than Sykes.  "Listen to me.  The Galactic Federation will go _insane_ if they learn that there's not one but two Metaskya on this planet.  They hate us.  Think we're all psychos and sneaks."

"Are you?" Sykes asked coldly.

"No more than humans are all terrorists who like to blow up cement plants."  He turned back to Ace.  "There are Federation affiliates who want the Metaskya wiped out.  As in genocide.  They talk about it like it'd be a very good thing.  You know why?  Because they know that if _they_ had the ability to do what we do, they'd use that ability to infiltrate a thousand worlds.  Establish power, harvest resources, make alliances with other infiltrated worlds - basically rule the galaxy."

"You don't want to do that?" Ace asked.

"No thanks.  Way more hassle than it's worth.  We just want to be left alone."

"I can only take your word," she said.

"Right.  Do that, will you?"  He sighed hard.  "Then there's the elements in the Federation who don't want to wipe us out so much as capture us and experiment on us and distil whatever it is in our DNA that allows us to morph.  So they can make themselves an army to do the thing they're so frightened we might do."

Ace sighed.  Smit's concerns had the ring of truth.  "Okay."  She turned to Sykes.  "It's your call, Councillor, but my own opinion is that we should tidy this up without Porinaz.  Back when I told you about the Irrizor, I was worried.  I thought the whole thing might end in genocide.  Couldn't have lived with myself if that had happened.  Same applies if we manage to trigger a war that wipes out the Metaskya."

Sykes considered a moment.  "Mr Smit makes a good point," he conceded.  "You can't judge an entire race on the actions of one individual.  Let's make the attempt to contain this problem ourselves.  If we fail, we can always reconsider."

"I've been thinking about this," Ace said.  "First we need to get Carson away from the settlement, because if anything goes pear-shaped then we'll be looking at collateral damage."

"Agreed," Sykes said.

"Which means using some bait," Ace concluded.

"What bait?" Sykes asked.

"Doriel," Ace said firmly.  Sykes looked like he was going to protest, so she quickly went on, "Oh, not the kid herself - she stays where she is, safe and sound."  _'Wherever that might be,'_ Ace added to herself.  "No - this is what I'm thinking.  I tell Carson that I've had a message from the Doctor - he's coming down to see me.  I tell Carson he's bringing the girl.  Carson sees his chance to grab the one that got away, so he comes with me.  And that's how we'll get him to walk into the trap we set."

Sykes asked, "And the form of this trap?"

Ace glanced at the Irrizor ambassador.  "Out in the open, Carson can escape.  I mean, just use your imagination.  How do you put cuffs on a guy who can shrink his hands?  How do you chase him down if he can run like a cheetah?"

Anders Smit said, "You don't imprison rogues.  You finish them."

"No due process?" Sykes asked.

"Of course, due process!  What the hell do you think my job is?"

"I don't know.  I only just met you."

"Boys," Ace said warningly.  "Look, what we need, first and foremost, is a location where Carson can't easily get away.  The ambassador might be able to help us there."  The Irrizor ambassador made a half-bow of consent; she was ahead of the rest of them, since she was hearing Ace's thoughts rather than her words.  "The hive have stonemasons.  Talented ones.  If we ask them nicely, perhaps they might dig us a pit in the granite of the quarry.  Smooth sides, nice and deep."

"A pit-trap?" Sykes asked.  "Why can't we just shoot the bastard, like we shot Mr Smit here?"

Smit snarled a smile and turned to Keenan.  Keenan stared back at him.

"Go on," Smit cajoled.  "You know you want to."

Keenan glanced at Ace.  Ace nodded, though she suspected she knew where this was going.  Keenan shrugged and discharged her rifle.  The blue energy flickered over Smit.  He shuddered and grinned.

"I don't get it," Sykes said, sounding anxious.  "I thought that was how you brought him in."

Ace shook her head.  "He faked it.  Didn't you, Anders?"

"Might have done," Smit said coyly.

Ace nodded.  "We only managed to capture him because he'd run out of options and needed some help."

"So why pretend to go down?" Sykes demanded.

Smit shrugged.  "Made you lot feel safer, didn't it?  Stopped you trying to damage me in other ways."  He looked at Ace.  "She's right.  I knew I needed help to do this job.  Ace was my best shot.  I already knew she wanted the killer stopped.  Wasn't her fault she happened to be screwing him."

"Yeah, let's mention that as much as possible," Ace grumbled.  "Can we get back to the plan?  We need to incapacitate Carson.  So we make a pit-trap."

"How does that help?" Sykes asked.  "Can't he just turn into an eagle or something?"

"Birds are tricky," Smit said.  "Body-mass thing again.  He could morph into a flock, but getting them all out of a deep pit?  No, he risks us taking down several birds before he's up and away.  Too many, and he can't morph back to his original form.  He'd be stuck as a flock of birds.  Not good."

"Winged reptiles?" Ace suggested.

"Hmm.  Do-able.  There's a winged serpent on Hulsinial Major, matches body mass nicely.  Useful form to know.  But even if the rogue has learned it, he'd still need a cliff to jump off in order to get airborne.  Vertical take-off?  Not going to happen.  He'd have to climb out this pit, first.  Which will be tricky if the sides are deep enough and made of smooth rock."  He looked thoughtful.  "There are arachnid forms that'd work if the gravity was lower.  Not on this planet, though."  He turned to the ambassador.  "Reminds me - I'd love to get a closer look at your exo-skeleton.  Whatever it's made of, the strength to mass ratio is incredible."

Ace glared at Smit.  "Incredible they may be, but we will _not_ be dissecting our friends, okay?"  Smit grinned and shrugged.  She glanced at the ambassador again.  "So what do you think?  Pit-trap in granite.  Can your guys pull it off?"  She received an undercurrent of assent.  "Okay.  Let's say we can buy ourselves maybe half a minute, while Carson's figuring out what to do.  Which lets Anders do - well, whatever sweepers do."

Smit looked up and winked at her.  Then he opened his mouth, reached for one of his canine teeth, and pulled.  It came right out: no blood, just a nasty-sounding click.

"Ew," said Keenan.  "Can I shoot him for that?"

Smit pulled something from the root of his tooth.  "I need a blowpipe.  If you'll let me go back to my cabin, now, without risking arrest, there's one there, disguised as a flute."

"That'll kill him?" Sykes asked, looking askance at the tiny needle-like object Smit was holding.

Smit shook his head.  "This will render him unconscious and hold him in his current form."

"So why the hell didn't you use it earlier?"

"Because it wears off after eight hours.  I shoot him in the settlement, he gets taken to a medical unit.  Monitored.  Probably tested.  Doctors work out his DNA isn't human.  Rule number one gets broken."

"Okay," Ace said.  "I think we should move past the fact that we haven't managed to stop this killer yet, and embrace the fact that we're now working together."  She looked at Sykes.  "And for the record?  Once it's over, I'll face whatever punishment the council deems appropriate.  I've been an absolute bloody liability to the colony.  It's my fault Anders hasn't been able to deal with this killer yet."

Sykes narrowed his eyes at her.  "Huh.  So, uh, you blame the victims for answering the door to a murderous shapeshifter?"

Ace frowned.  "Of course not."

He gave a small smile.  "Well, for the record, I don't blame you for not realising the guy who hit on you was a murderous shapeshifter, either."  He waited for Ace to nod her acceptance.  "And I'd deem it a personal favour," he added, looking around, "if everyone here agrees that Ace's personal life is information that doesn't leave this room."

No one objected.  The Irrizor ambassador sent an undercurrent of such genuine support that Ace had to swallow tears.

"Okay," said Sykes.  "We've got a plan."  He issued various instructions and then they all prepared to head out.  Keenan, reluctantly, holstered her rifle.  Chauhan grinned at Ace and patted her arm in a buddy-cop kind of a way as he moved past her, out to the transporters.  The rest followed.  Ace wondered how long it would be before they offered her an enforcer's uniform.  Admittedly, she was already fed up with the coveralls-and-T-shirt combo.

Sykes lingered with Ace in the cool hallway of the unfinished building.  "So," he said.

"So?"

"You're, uh, not married, then?"

~~~


	8. Chapter 8

_Settlement Alpha_

_Day Eight_  
_12:25 pm_

 

"So why doesn't the Doctor just come to the settlement?" Carson asked, as he strapped in behind Ace on the mini-transporter she'd requisitioned.

Ace's shoulders were tense.  She was trying to suppress the need to shudder, and could barely move her neck to look back at him.  After a morning spent with Sykes, Smit and the team, ironing out the details to the plan, she'd thought she would be able to deal with the proximity of this killer.  But she couldn't compartmentalise well enough.

This psycho had carved her name into a little girl's skin.  How did you just turn memories like that off?

She made herself breathe steadily.  "Obvious reason," she said.  She left it at that and gunned the engine.

"What obvious reason?" Carson demanded.

"Haven't you heard?" Ace called over the hum of the engine.  "There's a killer on the loose.  Doriel was meant to be a target.  Can't risk the killer catching sight of her."

"Oh," said Carson.  Probably with an evil grin, or something, but Ace was buggered if she was going to turn around and look.

"The kid just wants a bit of fresh air," Ace lied.  "And the Doctor wants to see me."  _'Yeah, I wish.'_ "It's all arranged.  The quarry's nice and private."

"No one else there at all?" Carson asked, so casually that it just had to be suspicious.

The urge to throw herself off the transporter and put some distance between herself and her passenger was almost impossible to resist.  Instead, Ace said, "The place won't be active again till we've sorted things out with the hive.  Should be safe enough."  She briefly bit her lip to try to release some of her inner tension.  "I was thinking we could have a walk up to the plateau.  Admire the view.  There's sandwiches in the trunk."

And there were, indeed, sandwiches.  Keenan had insisted that undercover operations lived and died on the details.

"So why am I coming?" Carson added.

Ace stared straight ahead through the mounted visor that would protect her from the wind and dirt as she rode this glorified quad-bike.  "Because, as I might have mentioned, there's a killer on the loose.  A killer who knows my name.  Sykes said-"

She stopped speaking, quite abruptly, because a piece of the puzzle had dropped into place.

Her name had been cut into Carson's victim in order to bolster Carson's clumsy attempt to incriminate the Doctor, yes, but he'd wanted more than an alternative suspect.  He'd wanted to isolate Ace.  With the Doctor suspected, maybe even in custody, Ace would have been alone and in need of support.  As it turned out, the Doctor's decision to leave Colonis had worked just as well for Carson, because while the incrimination part of the plan had failed, it had still left Ace alone.  And witnessing those letters of her name, so obscenely cut into innocent flesh, had made Ace feel singled-out by the killer.

It had been her presence at Carson's side, this past week, that had prevented Smit from making his move.  Carson had engineered for himself a companion; a witness; a bodyguard.  He'd done it deliberately.  He'd made her feel vulnerable: enough to crave - or even to simply tolerate - his company.

And it had worked.

"Ace?"

"Hmm?"

"Sykes said what?" Carson repeated, sounding irritated.

"Oh.  Sykes said I'm not allowed to go anywhere alone.  Just in case."

"I see."

Ace narrowed her eyes and tried some reverse psychology.  "Look, you don't have to come if you don't want.  I can grab one of the team from the Hub instead.  I just thought it might be nice.  Change of scene, you know?"

"It's fine.  Really.  Let's go."

A hand came down on her shoulder.  Ace swallowed bile.

She kicked off the brake, put the mini-transporter in gear and eased the throttle in.  The vehicle rumbled forward and began to pick up speed.

~~~

 

_Quarry beneath the western plateau_

_Day Eight_  
_1:05 pm_

 

Forty minutes later she was nearing the quarry where the colonists had, until quite recently, been blowing chunks out of the cliffs below the plateau.

"Ace," shouted Carson over the engine noise.

"What?"

"We going to be seeing any of your insect buddies?"

She knew by now that he wasn't concerned they'd mind-read his psychotic tendencies.  But he was probably aware that any passing hive member would notice how his mind was protected from telepathy, and that would mark him as different.

"Shouldn't think so," she called back.  It wasn't entirely a lie; the hive members that were in on the plan would remain out of sight.  "They're mainly nocturnal."  That was a lie.  So what?  Ace was okay with lying to murdering pieces of shit.

They arrived at the narrow cutting which formed the entrance to the quarry.  It was early in the afternoon and the weather was intermittently bright with sporadic showers.  The wind blew in from the east and conveyed the hint of smoke, dust and pig.

The quarry itself made use of a sheltered 'inlet' in the southeastern corner of the plateau.  Within the quarry, the cliffs were artificially terraced, like the hillsides in the Mediterranean where they grew oranges.  Scaffold clung to some of the rock faces, supporting pulley systems and winches.  Cranes oversaw it all, still and silent in the afternoon sunshine.  Below, tracks had formed in the rocky ground with the constant back and forth of industrial vehicles winding between huge piles of stone.  The vehicles themselves hunched low to the ground in this towering place, vaguely menacing, all massive spades and troughs and drills.

Ace stopped the transporter and dismounted where the cutting opened into the quarry proper.  She wanted badly to check her gun, but she was afraid of giving the game away.

"I don't see anyone here," Carson said, stretching his back as he waited beside her.

Ace pretended to check the wrist-device that Sykes had set her up with: the one that functioned as a watch, a communicator and a computer.  "Yeah, we're early.  I'm going to stretch my legs.  Coming?"

She didn't wait to see if he would follow.  If she insisted, he'd get suspicious.  She'd counted to ten in her head before she heard Carson's boots clumping along behind her.  The sound gave her the excuse to glance back.  She noted that he'd left his shoulder-bag on the transporter.  She wondered what he'd brought.  Spare clothes?  In fact, what did he do with his clothing when he morphed into animal-form?  Did he get naked, bundle them up and then carry them in his mouth?

"So where did you sleep last night?" Carson asked.

_'Like that's any of your fucking business,'_ she wanted to say.

"Didn't," she replied instead, quite truthfully.

"Oh."

Ace scanned the quarry.  Somewhere close by was the Irrizor ambassador: Ace's link to the hive.  Sykes was stationed at the top of the plateau with Chauhan.  Keenan was with Anders Smit, hiding behind a strategic pile of rocks close to the trap they'd prepared.  Keenan's transporter had been parked somewhere out of sight.

"You can still stay at mine, you know," Carson offered.  "No strings."

"I appreciate that," Ace said, trying not to grimace.  "But I need to get myself sorted.  It's about time.  I'll be moving back to the cabin tonight."

"On your own?"

Well, who else was there?  She was on her own now; might as well get used to it.  "Yup," she said.

"I suppose the Doctor will come back eventually."

"Right."  Wrong.  "Once we're sure the killer's in custody."

Carson grunted at that.  Then he said, "I know you miss him."

Sensitive, for a psycho.

Ace shrugged.  "Like I'd miss oxygen," she acknowledged.

They walked across the quarry, past piles of stone already blasted from the cliffs.  Ace aimed for the group of prefabricated offices in the far corner, safely away from the blast zone; it was the only thing worth walking towards in the oddly claustrophobic hollow of the quarry.  Her team had already factored this in when choosing the site of the trap.

"We can get some coffee over in the offices," Ace said, mainly to distract Carson from their surroundings.  "Then we can sit outside and keep an eye on the track."

"Okay," he said.  "When are they due?"

She checked her wrist-device again.  "If the shuttle landed on time," she extemporised, "they shouldn't be more than about fifteen minutes."  Ace was annoyed to hear the tremor on her exhale.

Carson heard it too.  "Nervous?"

Damn it, now she needed a reason to be nervous: one that didn't involve being in the company of a killer.  "You said it," she hedged.  "Missed him."

"The marriage thing was fake, though, right?" Carson pointed out.

"Yeah."

"Just friends, you said."

"Yeah."

A pause.  Ace blinked hard.  She wasn't sure whether her emotions were running so high because of the killer who was beside her or the Time Lord who was not.

"I didn't realise," Carson said.

Ace gave a small smile.  She didn't pretend not to understand.  "Maybe I didn't either."

They rounded a bend in the track.  Beside a big pile of rocks on the right was a discarded pallet from a forklift, covered in a ratty tarpaulin.  Ace was grateful that there was no more time to pursue their current topic of conversation.  She stopped and bent down to fiddle with her boot lace.  She willed Carson to keep walking.  He did for three strides, until he noticed she'd stopped and he turned back.  He was about half a metre away from the pallet.

"You okay?" he asked.

Heart pounding, she stood straight.  "Fine."

He nodded, and turned back to face the offices they were supposedly heading towards.  He stepped past the nearest corner of the covered pallet, and Ace saw her chance going begging.

"Shit," she muttered.

Carson stopped and turned back.  "What?"

She pointed at the top of the plateau which overlooked the quarry.  "I saw something," she improvised.  "Someone moving.  Up there."

Carson, naturally enough, followed her pointing hand and squinted into the afternoon sky.  "Insects?" he hazarded.

"Unlikely, out in the open."  She edged closer, as unobtrusively as she could.  "What if someone followed us?  What if it's the killer?"  She allowed the anxiety she felt to permeate her tone.  "Jesus, I might have led the fucker right here!"

"I think you're being paranoi-"

Carson didn't finish the word.  Ace had gathered herself and then launched her body across the small distance that separated them.  In the space of a single second she had slammed into Carson while he still studied the edge of the plateau.  Her momentum drove him to the ground, right on top of the tarpaulin which covered what was supposed to be a pallet for conveying supplies around the quarry site, but which in fact marked the edges of a four metre deep pit.

Carson's body fell through the tarpaulin and didn't stop there.  Ace tried to twist clear of the mouth to the pit, knowing what it was, but she'd been more concerned with forcing Carson's body in there than she had been with keeping herself safe.  Her right shoulder hit the edge of the stripped-down pallet and her arm reached over it, but her legs missed the side of the pit altogether and slid down the hole.  She grunted with the pain of the impact, and her other arm somehow managed to reach over the edge.  Her shoulders pulled hard as she arrested her fall, and one of them made a horrible noise and then flared with a pain so bright and hot that she almost broke the habit of a lifetime and let out a scream.

But there was a part of her brain that decided it would rather experience intense pain than let go and fall into the waiting arms of a killer.  She managed to cling to the side of the pit.  Ace blinked tears of agony away and looked along the ground as she heard scuffed footsteps.  Smit and Keenan were racing towards her.  Keenan looked frantic.

"Shoot the bastard," Ace ground out.  "Don't worry about me!"

Smit was on the same page.  He skidded up to the edge of the pit, blowpipe at the ready, and peered down to take aim.  Keenan, armed with a massive silver Smith and Wesson revolver liberated from the stash of confiscated weapons which had accumulated at the shuttle-port, found her own position and adopted a two-handed stance covering the hole.  Smit had already informed them that a head-shot from an old-fashioned projectile weapon was more likely to damage Carson than an energy blast.

Ace clung, feet scrabbling against smooth walls, one of her arms just about useless and the other slipping, slipping, slipping...

Smit blew, and his needle left the blowpipe with a little phut.  "Got him!" Smit cried triumphantly.  Then, a moment later, "Shit."

"What?" Ace growled.

Keenan fired the revolver.  The sound, so close by, was deafening.  Ace felt the percussive reverberations through the rock.

Smit said, "Shit, shit, shit!"

" _What_?" Ace yelled.

"What the fuck is that?" Keenan demanded.

Smit said, "Shit!  Yxxilium.  Rock-boring beetle from Fenimeer."

The percussive reverberations continued.  Ace realised she hadn't been sensing the gunshot at all.

"I didn't miss," Smit insisted.  "He'd already started to morph.  Exo-skeleton of an yxxilium is harder than diamond."

The reverberations diminished.  Ace's strength was failing.  The pain was making her vision fuzzy.

"He got away," she whispered.  "Bollocks."

She slipped.  She fell.

She stopped falling with a yank that hurt her ribs.

Groggily, she looked down.  She was still a metre away from the hard, unforgiving floor of the rocky pit.  Around her waist was something long, strong and pliable.  It lifted her up, and up, and over.  She was deposited on the ground, quite gently.

Keenan said, "That is just _gross_."

Smit said, "Tentacles can be so practical, though."

Ace blacked out.

~~~

 

_Quarry beneath the western plateau_

_Day Eight_  
_1:30 pm_

 

A blinding bolt of agony savaged her right shoulder, and Ace came to with a yelp.  She tried to roll away, get clear, protect herself.  Hands held her to the ground and a voice said, "Easy - easy."

She opened bleary eyes and saw Keenan leaning over her.  "What the fuck?" Ace demanded.

"Sorry," Keenan said.  "Just re-locating your shoulder.  You wrenched it out."

Ace winced at the throbbing across her arm and shoulder.  "Ouch," she grumbled, somewhat belatedly.  She hauled herself up, noting that her jacket had been removed and was on the ground beside her.  She was not going to be putting it on again any time soon.

Keenan said, "Chin up."  Ace looked up at her, in time to see the enforcer deliver some kind of medication into her neck with a hypospray.  Pain-killers, hopefully.  "Should take the edge off."

"Here."  Anders Smit was offering her his T-shirt.  "Sling."

Keenan nodded and proceeded to demonstrate that her enforcer's first-aid training was up to scratch.  She folded the shirt over and then tied it to cradle Ace's arm against her chest.

While she did so, Ace recalled exactly where they were and what they were doing.  "How long was I out?" she asked.

"Four and a bit minutes," said Smit.

"And where's Carson?"

"Tunnelled south," Smit said, pointing.  "Came up where the track cuts inside the cliffs.  I tried to catch up, but he morphed to his treshaki form, grabbed a bag from the transporter and sped off out of the quarry."

"Why did he change?"

"Yxxilium are slow."

"So why didn't you catch up while he was tunnelling?"

"Because yxxilium block up their tunnels with rubble as they move.  There was no way to follow.  I could only try to keep track of vibrations."

"Oh."  Ace frowned.  She collected her stun-gun from her jacket and stashed it into a pocket of her coveralls.  Even doing that much with her left hand told her that she wasn't going to be much use with the weapon any time soon.  "So after he came up and changed form, did you see which way he went?"

"Looked like north, along the eastern edge of the plateau."

That was surprising news.  "So he's heading away from the settlement."

"Yes.  Good thing too."

Keenan stood back, admiring her sling-handiwork.  Ace shrugged her shoulder.  It ached hard, and she hated the fact that she was now restrained on one side, but falling four metres on to a rock floor would have broken her legs, if not worse, so she considered herself lucky.

Smit was still focused on their target.  "He's looking for some space.  Privacy.  Time to regroup.  Everything's gone wrong for him.  He hasn't been able to kill for days - that'll be driving him mad with frustration.  And now he's lost the thing that stopped me coming for him - you, Ace.  He knows we're working together now."

She nodded.  Keenan helped her to her feet.  Ace fished in a coveralls pocket and donned her telepathy device.

"Ambassador?" she called.  "You close enough to hear this?"

[This one hears.  Request assistance?]  The communication was less fluent than usual; Ace assumed there was a greater distance involved.

"The bad guy has left the quarry.  He's in the form of a feline, running to the north."

[The hive tracks.  No longer running.  Hides in borgrash woods.]

"Hiding?  Why?"

[Weapon fired from plateau.]

"Oh.  Okay.  Stand by, Ambassador."  Ace looked at her companions.  "You hear shots fired?"

"Only the shot I fired myself," said Keenan.

"I heard something," Smit said.  "Ultrasonic.  Blaster?"

"Sykes or Chauhan must have seen the cat and worked it out."  Ace examined the device on her left wrist.  "Okay, I need to call Sykes.  Anyone want to lend me a right hand?"

Keenan reached in and thumbed the small screen.  The call connected.  Sykes's miniaturised face appeared; he looked perturbed.  "Ace.  Thank goodness."

"Right then," Ace said.  "My pit-trap idea failed spectacularly.  Carson tunnelled out.  I hear there were shots fired from up top?"

"Chauhan spotted a wildcat of some kind, running with a bundle in its mouth.  Wasn't hard to put it together.  He thinks he winged it.  No telling what permanent damage he might have done."

Smit, peering over Ace's shoulder, said, "None.  Metamorphs instantly regen damaged tissue.  But you made him think about his options.  Stopped him running out in the open."

Ace added, "According to the ambassador, he dived into some trees to hide.  Can you see where that is?"

"Sure can.  The foothills beneath the north edge of the plateau are covered with clumps of woodland.  The tall trees with the glossy leaves, a bit like beech?  It's kind of north-west from where you guys are right now.  Chauhan's got his rifle scope trained that way.  Don't think he's even blinking.  There's a group of Irrizor spreading out up the western edge of the trees to cut off his escape that way."

"Good.  Ambassador?  You still with me?"

[This one hears you, Ace.]  The thought came through more clearly; the ambassador had found a closer position.

"Suggestions?"

[If the killer tunnels, we can track.  If the killer runs, we can follow the scent.]

Ace considered.  "Hmm.  Underground.  Overground.  Wombling free?"  Sykes's expression remained blank; understandable, since she'd just referenced a kid's TV programme from late twentieth century Britain.  "Sorry.  If he goes underground, the Irrizor can stay on him.  Overground, we'll need to run him down."

Sykes asked, "What if he takes to the air?"

Smit said, "He won't.  Getting winged by a rifle mid-air is a lot more likely to cause him catastrophic damage."

"Then _we_ take to the air," Ace decided.  To Sykes, she said, "Who's your best skimmer pilot?"

"That'd be Soo Min."

"Can you get her in the air, preferably alongside a gunner who's handy with a long-range high-calibre rifle?"

"You got it.  Why's your arm in a sling?"

"I always go for the sympathy vote," Ace said.  "Talk to you soon, Des."

"Look after each other down there," he said, then cut the call.

Keenan said, "Ooh.  'Des', is it, now?"

"Shut up."  Ace hoped she wasn't blushing.  "Right.  We need to get closer to that woodland."  She looked at the single track which led south out of the quarry.  "Unfortunately that means going the long way around.  I need to get the transporter.  And someone else is going to have to drive."

[Ace.  There are tunnels.  The hive can lead you.]

"Where from?" Ace asked.

"Where from what?" Keenan asked.  "Oh, sorry," she added, as Ace frowned at her and looked steadily at the cliff face.

[The closest entrance is near the top of the climbing framework to the west.]

Ace turned and looked at the scaffold.  It stretched upwards for perhaps fifteen metres.  "I can't climb that," she said.  "Not with one arm strapped up."

Smit said, "I can."  He handed Ace his blowpipe, which she took, nonplussed.  And then he surprised both Ace and Enforcer Keenan by toeing off his shoes and stripping off his coveralls.  "Sorry, ladies," he added.  "Might need these later."  He turned his back and yanked his clothes down.  Ace and Keenan shared a mutual arched-eyebrow.  By the time they looked back, Smit's bare-arsed human form was changing shape.  His arms lengthened.  His torso shortened.  Hair sprouted in the blink of an eye.  By the time he turned back to face them, he looked like a cross between a mountain gorilla and a very large lemur.  He held out his arms, as if saying, 'So what do you think?'

Ace gathered Smit's clothing and tucked the bundle inside her sling.  Then she grinned at Keenan.  "Someone once told me I had a knack for making odd friends.  So - you want to take the transporter?"

Keenan nodded.  "I'm off to wait for Soo Min," she said.  "She'll call me for a pick-up."  Keenan tilted her head, almost bashful.  "I'm the best long-range shot on Colonis.  So I'll be in the air."  She considered her shiny silver revolver.  "Which means this is no good to me.  Here."  She handed the gun to Ace.

"I can't fire this bloody thing with one good arm!" Ace said.

"Then give it to Anders."  Keenan jogged off towards the track leading out of the quarry.

Ace checked the safety and deposited the revolver in one of the long, deep pockets low on the leg of her coveralls.  She put the blowpipe in the other one and then turned to look at Smit.  "Okay, Anders," she said.  "Any comments about my weight and I'll take great pleasure in kicking your little baboon behind."  She wrapped her good arm over Smit's thick, muscular shoulder and let him heft her up into a piggy-back.

Then he started to run for the scaffold, and Ace could only hold on tight.

~~~


	9. Chapter 9

_North side of western plateau_

_Day Eight_  
_1:50 pm_

 

Ace stood on a ledge on the north-facing cliffs of the plateau.  Before her, slowly rising in the distance towards a range of forested mountains, the lush grassy plains of Colonis were interspersed with clumps of darker green: stands of the borgrash trees described by Sykes.  Closer to, the nearest patch of woodland appeared tall and dark and foreboding.  If she turned her head to the right, looking north-east, she could just make out the suggestion of regular, machined shapes: the concrete and girder of Colonia City in its infancy.

Smit stood beside her, currently in a strange griffin-like form.  He'd shifted into a slouchy cat as they'd made their way through the tunnels, but on emerging into the daylight he'd morphed his head and shoulders into those of a giant raptor.  Ace guessed it was a choice that might make the most of his eyesight.

[The hive has sensed activity in the trees to the left,] the ambassador said from the mouth of the tunnel behind them.  [Noises.  Strange noises that the hive cannot identify.  Mechanical sounds.]

"Underground, maybe?" Ace suggested, studying the forest to the left, squinting in the sunlight which seemed painfully bright after the gloom of the algae torches in the tunnels.  "Carson might be doing the ginormous beetle thing again."

[No.  Above the ground.]

Mechanical sounds above ground?  What the hell was Carson up to?

The ambassador went on, [The hive surrounds this wood to the west and north, now.  We do not wish to fight, but we can watch, and we can track.]

Ace nodded, sensing the ambassador's concern for her brothers and sisters.  It was concern that she shared.  "Make sure they don't engage.  I don't think he'll waste time attacking you if you don't get in his way."

[This is our hope.  But the hive will fight if we are hurt.]  A pause.  [We prefer to avoid conflict, Ace, but we are not without strength.]

"No doubt.  But this bad guy is our problem, not yours.  Let's get him sorted out, then I can find the right words to tell you how much your hive rocks."

Blurring light caught her eye.  Smit had shaken off his hybrid form and morphed back into the human shape of Anders Smit.  Unconcerned with his nudity, he pointed.  "There.  On the edge of the wood, just beyond that patch of scree - see?"

Ace peered in the direction he specified.  She wished she had some binoculars.  "Er, no..."

Movement.  A figure stumbled out of the trees, feet skidding on the suddenly gravelled slope.  After recovering its balance, the figure looked up at the cliff-face further to the west.

This figure was very, very familiar to Ace.

"No," she said again, but not because she couldn't see.  "Oh, no.  You may _not_ use that form, you murdering psychotic toerag!"

Her voice was shaking, raised partly in anger and partly in grief, because it was not right and it was not fair that she got to glimpse the Doctor once again when it wasn't even really him.  It was bad enough, trying to come to terms with his departure.  To be tempted and teased with this bastardised copy: it was perverse.  It bordered on emotional torture.

She looked downwards.  She'd have easily made the two metre climb to the scree and the grass below if she hadn't been deprived of the use of one arm.  "Damn it, I need a lift down," she snapped.

"He's using the Doctor's form," Smit mused, as if he couldn't work out why.

Ace knew why.  Carson was taunting her, messing with her.  The last time they'd talked, before she'd shoved him into a pit-trap, he'd been all over her confused feelings for the Doctor.

"I am going to end that bastard," she growled through clenched teeth.

"No you're not," Smit said mildly.  "That's my job.  You can help, if you like.  Lift up your good arm."

Ace did so.  "How many needles do you have left for your blowpipe?"

"Enough."

"How many?"

"One."

She sighed.  "Make it count, then."  She checked the tree-line.  Carson had retreated into the cover of the wood.  "Want your clothes back?"

"Keep them for now.  I'll morph again when I'm in the woods.  This form won't be fast enough.  Ready?"

Smit's body shrank slightly as his arm reached around her, then extended, wrapping, until he could lift her up.  Ace didn't look too closely at the leathery tentacle that now supported her.

[Ace - good fortune in your hunt.]

"Cheers, mate," she told the ambassador.  "See you in a bit."

Smit lowered her down to the ground and then followed in the form of the gorilla-thing, and the two of them headed for the tree-line where they'd seen Carson in his borrowed form emerge.  Once within the shade of the woodland, Smit held out a gorilla-rough hand.  Ace placed his blowpipe in it and then watched as he swung himself up into the nearest tree.  She examined the floor of the woodland, but she was not sufficiently adept at tracking to spot the trace evidence of anyone who might have walked this way.  So she waited for Smit to take up a position, and watched.

The wind rustled the new spring leaves of the trees.  The smaller, leafier branches, a good five metres above her head, swayed.  A gorilla-face stuck out from the foliage, followed by an arm.  Black eyes regarded her seriously as the arm swept around in an anti-clockwise arc.

Ace looked to her left, pointed and then curled her arm back towards the north.  She looked up.  The gorilla-hand made a thumbs-up sign and moved off through the trees to the right.

Flanking.  The old ones were the best.

She began to pick her way further into the woodland, keeping to the left side of this particular clump of trees.  The weight of the revolver was heavy in her pocket, but she knew she couldn't use the weapon.  She fished out her stun-gun and held it loosely in her left hand, more for a sense of security than anything else.  Her knife was sheathed on her right ankle, out of easy reach at the moment, but there were two marbles of Nine-A, one fused and one impact-detonated, in the pocket on her right upper arm which she could still reach.

She was aware that every step she took in her steel-toed boots might as well have been an alarm-siren.  She recalled a conversation about footwear in a giant-insect cocoon.  Felt like it had happened a lifetime ago.

To her right: movement.  She gasped and spun, pointing her stun-gun in the direction of the shadow...

Nothing.  She didn't know enough about the wildlife on this planet to make an educated guess about the innocent company she might currently be keeping.

A noise: she stopped and listened.  A humming.  She identified the location of the sound and looked up through the gaps in the leafy canopy.  Had the Irrizor taken to the air on those little wings of theirs?

No.  No, that was a skimmer, making a pass not far above the trees.  Soo Min and Keenan, Ace hoped.  So if Smit didn't make his shot with the blowpipe, they still had a chance.  Carson couldn't hide forever, and he couldn't outrun a skimmer.  Desmond Sykes was probably organising cover to the east, anyway.

She started moving again.  Her shoulder ached with a dull and distant throb, and her head hurt.  She hadn't slept nearly enough in the last week.  When this was over she needed to sort out her routine.  Proper sleep, proper food, proper exercise.  Then maybe Des's offer of 'dinner sometime' was something she could consider.

Except that she missed the Doctor like she'd miss oxygen.

Movement again: she tensed, crouched, scanned her immediate surroundings.  Nothing.  She began to move, still bent low to the ground.  Quicker steps, fluid steps, half-running because she wasn't prepared to stand for this game of cat-and-mouse.  She curled her lip in a snarl as she jogged along, reminding herself of her opponent.  It didn't matter what he looked like; this was a vicious killer who cut people up, who gloried in their pain and suffering.  He'd made her own name into something tainted and evil, and now he'd stolen the form of the best man in the twelve galaxies, just because he knew it would cause her distress.

Ace told herself these things, over and over.  Preparing herself.  She didn't want to find herself hesitating when the time came to attack, no matter what face her target wore.

She jumped over a fallen, rotten bough and skidded to a halt on the mulch of the woodland floor.  She looked around; she'd lost that vague sense of movement ahead.  She was making her way roughly northwards.  Four or five metres to her left was the western tree-line, beyond which was open ground monitored by the hive.  Smit was on the other side of the woodland to the east, but how far away was that?  Too far for Ace to be sure that Carson hadn't doubled back through the middle of the wood, heading south towards the cliffs.

She wondered about trying to talk to the ambassador, then immediately stopped the thought in its tracks.  If the ambassador answered now, she'd be broadcasting for every telepathically sensitive being in the area to hear.  Ace reached up and snatched the comms device from her head and stuffed it in a pocket.  Better not to risk it.

Crouching again, she stilled her breath and listened.  Over to her right, a twig snapped.  Smit?  Or Carson?  But even as she turned that way, she jerked back, looking ahead, almost due north.

Because a familiar voice cried, "Ace!"

The muscles in her stomach tensed and creased with the sound, almost making her crumple around herself.  Oh, god, that voice!  She hated that a killer could do this: could make her want to run and run and just throw her arms around him.  She bit her lip against the need to call back, and tried to stop trembling.

"Ace - answer me, please!"

Carson was feigning such desperation, it was obscene.  Ace couldn't figure why the hell he thought he could pull off this kind of trickery.  He must have worked out by now that the supposed meeting with Doriel and the Doctor had been a ruse.  She tightened her grip on the stun-gun and started moving again, low to the ground, then straightening up: jogging, then running-

And then she stopped.

Over to her right, between tree trunks, there was a familiar glimpse of blue.

"Oh," she whispered between panted breaths.  She frowned, and - cautiously - picked her way across the woodland floor towards it.

The TARDIS.

She stood there, blinking at it, feeling like she'd just taken a headlong plunge through the looking-glass.  Standing close to this blue box once again left her closer to tears than she generally liked to come.  She lifted a tentative hand to touch the door panel, part of her afraid that she was seeing a mirage.  Just as a dying man in the desert might thirst for the water of an oasis, Ace was thirsting for the only place she'd ever considered home.

The panel was solid.  The craft emitted the lowest of thrums, as if in welcome.  Ace felt her mouth crack a smile-

"Ace!"

She jumped.  Her eyes grew wider.

Ace spun, expecting to see him, longing to see him, confused but happy because she could _believe_ in this, she could believe in the TARDIS.  But he wasn't there.  He had to be close.  He sounded so close!  She turned from the ship and began to move towards his voice.  She drew breath to call out-

"We have to leave!" the Doctor cried.  "Ace, please - where are you?"

"I'm coming!" Ace's voice yelled out.

Unfortunately, it wasn't Ace who had done the yelling.

She stopped, because up ahead she saw a place where the trees thinned out.  The Doctor was partially visible in the distance.  He stood in what seemed to be a clearing, next to an old, moss-covered stump.  He was looking over to the east.  And Ace could have kicked herself, because she should have realised earlier when she'd caught that glimpse: _he was in his usual clothes_.  Not the Colonis-issue coveralls.  She'd been so convinced that the Doctor, the real Doctor, was long gone, and the only person wearing his face in these trees was a shape-changing killer.  She'd seen what she'd expected to see.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

"It's okay," Ace's voice called.  "I'm here."

Ace watched herself walk into the clearing.  She saw the Doctor's shoulders move with a hearts-felt sigh of relief.  Carson, wearing Ace's stolen form, approached the Doctor.  Ace wanted to yell at him that it wasn't her, _it wasn't her_ , couldn't he even tell the difference?

"You have got to be kidding me," she muttered to herself.  "Psycho-killer meets comic fucking farce?"

~~~

 

_Woodland north of the western plateau_

_Day Eight_  
_2:10 pm_

 

It had taken less than a minute to creep forward to a place where she could see, properly, what was going on.  Still a safe distance from the clearing, she found a natural hollow between the thick roots of one of the beech-like trees, and used it as cover.  From there she studied the lay of the land.

Ace's first idea was to shoot herself.  The fake 'herself', obviously.  She lifted her stun-gun and took aim to where Carson-pretending-to-be-Ace stood close to the Doctor.

The stubby gun barrel wavered drunkenly in her left hand.  She wrote a mental memo: she needed to work on her ambidexterity.  You never knew when it could come in handy.

For now, left-handed gun-totin' wasn't going to serve her.  There was a solution to the problem, however.  A touch gingerly, she pulled her right arm free of Smit's T-shirt and then discarded the makeshift sling and its accompanying bundle of clothing.  The pain-killers and the adrenaline had seen off the more unbearable discomfort in her right shoulder, leaving her with an aching throb that, for the moment, was live-able-with.

She promised herself she'd strap the thing up again once this was over.  For now, needs must.  So she held her stun-gun out with her right hand.  Agony bit as her arm lifted, but she supported it with her left and was able to ignore the pain.  Her aim was true.

She then remembered that Anders Smit had shrugged off a blast from Keenan's stun-rifle like he'd been shot with nothing more damaging than a water-pistol.  Ace's own stun-gun worked on different principles, since it had been designed and manufactured on a planet half a galaxy and four centuries away from this one.  But it was still an energy weapon, and Smit had said that energy weapons were no real threat to a metamorph.

Ace tried to think past her tiredness and her pain.  She could try her weapon out, of course, but if it didn't work then she'd have lost the element of surprise.  Pulling off an accurate shot was always so much easier if your target was standing still.

With a sigh, she shoved the stun-gun back into her pocket and considered instead the Smith and Wesson.  She pulled it out and tested its weight, holding it with both hands before her.  It was heavy and cumbersome, but she could probably pull the trigger.  Of course, the recoil was very likely to a) make her fall over and b) relieve her of this temporary ability to use her right arm.  And the chances of pulling off an accurate shot with a weapon she'd never fired before were little-to-none.

The revolver was definitely a last-gasp option.  She put it back in her pocket.

All this had taken around thirty seconds.  Carson-as-Ace had been scanning the clearing near where the Doctor waited.  The Doctor still looked pretty bloody frantic.

Ace needed a plan-B.

Her second idea was to rush into the clearing.  Even if the Doctor couldn't tell the real Ace from the fake Ace, he'd at least become aware that there was subterfuge at play.  This seemed like a worthy goal.

Her body tensed, ready to run and shout and distract the Doctor from whatever trickery Carson-as-Ace was planning to perpetrate.  The shapeshifter had turned to the Doctor and now stood close as they spoke in voices too low for Ace to hear.

Then she considered Anders Smit, who was hopefully nearby and preparing his final anti-metamorph needle in his blowpipe.  How was charging into the clearing going to help him?  He'd see two Aces.  The time it would take for him to work out which was the real one...well.  It was time that could only work in Carson's favour.

But what if she stayed put?  Smit would then see the Doctor and Ace in a clearing, and he'd assume that the Doctor was the bad guy.

Ace muttered, "Fucking hell," and decided to join the party.  If nothing else, she wanted to get close enough to Carson to punch his fake face.

She stood up and picked her way through the grass and shrubs of the woodland floor, moving from tree to tree, trying to remain undetected for as long as possible.  The nobbly roots and patches of prickly bracken made the going awkward, but Ace kept on, schooling her expression to steely determination.  Never mind that all she really wanted to do was throw her arms around the Doctor.  (Or maybe smack him in the face for leaving her in the first place.  Or maybe both.)  Never mind that she was walking towards the psycho who had tricked her into sex just to use her as a normal-person disguise, an Ace-shaped accessory, while he was devoting his spare time to carving her name into the bodies of innocent victims.  Never mind that the whole situation was as fucked-up a thing as she could remember encountering.

She was close enough to hear the conversation now.

"...isn't any more time!" the Doctor was saying, all urgency, arms imploring.  "I need to get you away from here.  Ace, _please_!"

"You don't know what's been going on," Carson-as-Ace said, giving a good impression of being just as wound up as the Time Lord.  "I need to know.  Where is she?  Where's the girl?"

It occurred to Ace that psycho-killers could be well and truly focused when it came to their psychoses.  Because even now, all his deceptions uncovered, Carson was more interested in killing the girl who'd got away than in making his escape from justice.

The Doctor said, "What girl?"  He looked genuinely puzzled.

Ace smirked.  Carson appeared to be giving serious thought to flailing his (or her) arms around in true tantrum style.  "Doriel, of course!"

"Oh!  She's safe.  Ace, we have to-"

"Take me to her," Carson demanded.

"What is wrong with you?" the Doctor said, brow furrowed.  Seemed he was finally cottoning on that something wasn't right here.  Ace paused by the last tree that hid her presence from the occupants of this clearing.  She was too intrigued by the exchange to break it up.

Carson-as-Ace seemed to realise that this insistence on seeing Doriel was undermining his, or her, performance.  (Ace tut-tutted at herself and decided it didn't matter that Carson was currently wearing a copy of her own body; she was going to continue to think of him as a 'he'.)  Carson moved even closer to the Doctor and made that fake-Ace face do something that was all lip-trembly and wide-eyed.

"I missed you," Carson said, reaching for the Doctor's hand.  A small, watery smile.  "God, I missed you.  So much."

The Doctor's urgency dissipated.  His expression softened.  Ace felt that crease of discomfort in her gut again, as she watched him respond to the interloper in a way that should have been for Ace herself.  Carson was lifting the Doctor's hand to press it against his stolen face.  Ace experienced a rush of nausea, because she could hardly stand the violation in this act of intimacy.  She bit her lip and drew breath to shout out-

The Doctor snatched his hand back and stepped away.  His expression was no longer tender.  It twisted into anger.  In fact - yup - there he was.  The Oncoming Storm.

"Who are you?" the Time Lord demanded in a dangerous voice that brooked no denial.

Time Lords, of course, are touch-telepaths.

Ace's spirits soared.  She stepped out of her cover and began to walk towards them, feeling as if the Doctor had passed some kind of test.  Carson-as-Ace tried to brazen it out, feigning distress at the Doctor's rejection, but Ace noticed Carson's hand sneaking into a pocket of his coveralls.

She finally found her voice.  "He's just a poor copy," she announced cheerfully.  "Not to worry.  The real one's right here.  The original and still the best."

The Doctor had spun to face her when she spoke.  She saw a brief burst of relief in his expression, before it tensed into suspicion again.  "Ace?"

Ace rolled her eyes in exasperation.  She stopped a few paces away from the Doctor.  "Tell me you're not sure of me and I'll kick your arse with my big sturdy boots," she said.

He glanced down at her Docs, perhaps anticipating the damage a kick might do, then he looked back up and arched a brow.  "I really must insist on moccasins, next time."

There was a period of perhaps three seconds when they just stood there, grinning stupidly at each other.

Then there was a flash of something shiny in sunlight, and the Doctor was stumbling backwards, his feet struggling to keep up with the rest of him.  He managed to get Ace's name out before the sound ended in a pained hiss.  Carson backed up to a tree on the other side of the clearing, holding the Doctor's body in front of him like a shield.  The tip of a silver penknife blade had already breached the side of the Doctor's neck.  A bit more pressure and the tiny trickle of orange-tinted blood that was seeping on to the collar of the Doctor's shirt would become a gush.

And even with all this going on, the Doctor still managed to grind out the words, "No!  You don't understand - we have to leave this place!  We have to leave now!"

"Bollocks," said Ace.

She wondered where the hell Smit had got to.

~~~


	10. Chapter 10

_Woodland north of western plateau_

_Day Eight_  
_2:25 pm_

 

"Ever heard of the Sysk?" Carson called over to Ace.  "Huge snake things, native to the second planet in the Benym system.  The venom they produce is serious stuff."

Ace was watching the way the Doctor's hands were moving.  She deliberately looked away.  "Oh yeah?" she said, trying to provide a focus for Carson's attention.  She knew full well that it wouldn't take more than a touch for the Doctor to disarm Carson: just so long as it was the _right_ touch.

Carson, unfortunately, stopped talking to Ace and tightened his grip on the Doctor.  "Drop your hands to your sides, and bear in mind that if they move again I'm going to slit your throat.  I am _that_ annoyed, all right?"

The Doctor did as he was advised.  Ace swallowed.  "Getting back to the Sysk?" she said, because she still wanted Carson's attention on her, not on the Doctor.

"Right.  Sysk venom is highly sought after.  Mainly by assassins.  Provokes a massive heart attack, every single time, across multiple species, but only after a day's incubation in the bloodstream."

"So?" Ace asked, watching that penknife blade.  It was never a good thing to see the Doctor threatened; it was almost unbearable to watch someone who was the very image of Dorothy McShane do the threatening.

"So the poison can be delivered, then the assassin can make themselves scarce, and when the victim snuffs it there's no link.  And it's completely undetectable - tasteless, odourless, colourless.  You can deliver it in food or water, medication, hypospray.  If skin-contact is long enough it'll absorb that way too, without so much as a rash.  Most times, the victim doesn't even know they've been poisoned until the few seconds before their heart gives out."

"Look, ease up on the knife there, Carson," Ace begged.  "He isn't going anywhere."

Carson ignored her.  "The most advanced _post-mortem_ will only identify heart disease.  Natural causes."

Ace watched, helpless, as the trickle of blood from the wound at the Doctor's throat spread ever more boldly over the white of his collar.  The Doctor was standing far too still, given the circumstances, for Ace to convince herself that the blade of the penknife was not dangerously close to something vital.

"Common wisdom has it that twelve of the most high-profile assassinations in Gal-Fed history were done with Sysk venom."  Carson smiled absently at the place where his penknife pierced the Doctor's skin.  "Never been proved, of course.  Honestly, it's very useful stuff."

"So you're telling us this because...?" Ace asked.

"Tiny vial of Sysk venom will cost around thirty million Gal-Fed credits if you buy from a black market base like Trillith or Breaker-Station.  That's, er - how to put this in terms you hicks can understand?  The passenger liner up in orbit that somehow got us here from Sol-3?  You'd be able to buy two of them, brand new, for the same money you'd spend on a vial of Sysk venom."

"Pricey, then," Ace said.

"What I'm saying.  But I can get it for free.  Whenever I like."  Carson grinned at Ace: _her_ grin, _her_ lips and teeth; the sight of it made her stomach twist.  "Which is an excellent skill to have, because it means I'm never strapped for cash.  I had some hairy moments on Benym-2, but they were worth it.  I took the time to learn the Sysk form."

Ace swallowed hard.  "You have a knife to my friend's throat," she pointed out.  "Why are we talking about snake-bites?"

"Because the Doctor here is going to get me off this shithole of a planet."

"I most certainly am no-"  The Doctor stopped talking as the penknife's blade sliced him a little deeper.

Carson said to Ace, "You, sweetness, are going to stay here until nightfall.  Pretty sure even your brain-dead enforcer buddies will work out something's up if they see two of you.  So you stay here, and your fake husband and I are going to walk out of this woodland.  Dr and Mrs McShane, yeah?"

"You'll be stopped," Ace said.  "Sykes knows what you are."

"Which is why I'll need credentials, in the form of the Doctor here."  Carson nodded to himself, and Ace realised he was winging this whole plan.  "We'll head for the shuttle-port.  I'll hitch a ride with the Feds, I think - no point waiting for a lift back to Sol-3.  Once I'm up there, I can morph to suit the environment - there's no way they'll track me down."

"Why would we help you do that?" Ace demanded.

"Honestly, Ace?  Got to tell you - nice arse, pretty face.  But there isn't much going on up top, is there?"  Carson rolled his eyes.  " _Both_ of you are going to make sure I get to the Fed ship in orbit, because I'm about to infect Dr McShane with Sysk venom.  And I'm not going to offer the extremely effective antidote - oh, hang on, did I mention there's an antidote?  Probably didn't, did I?  Well there is one.  Sysk generate it themselves - nature's fail-safes, and all that.  So don't you worry.  As soon as I'm looking out of a viewport up in orbit, safe in the knowledge that I will not be muddying my boots on Colonis ever again, I will cough up some antidote."  He hesitated and frowned.  "Almost literally.  It isn't a pleasant thing to watch, but hey.  Better than heart failure, right?"

"There's a problem with your plan," the Doctor said.

"Oh is there?  Oh really?  Enlighten me, do," invited Carson.

"I'm not human.  If Sysk venom affects me at all, it'll take about ten times as long to work.  But it probably won't.  My system is remarkably good at breaking down toxins."

Carson was quiet a moment.  Ace noticed him altering his hold around the Doctor's shoulders so he could find a pulse-point.  The killer frowned in concentration.

"Shit, you're right," Carson said.  "About twelve beats a minute?"

"Well, I'm rather stressed at the moment," the Doctor said.

"And what's with the weird double-patter?"

"Two hearts."

"Ah."  For a moment Carson was deep in thought, then he stirred.  "Oh well.  Change of plans.  Looks like I'm morphing into you, then, Doctor.  We're going to need to swap clothes.  I'll be walking out of here with the lovely Ace at my side."  The Doctor's expression went thunder-cloud grey, and his lips tightened.  Carson lowered his voice and said, "Don't worry, mate.  Pretty sure Ace'll be a _lot_ more into me when I look like you."

"Ace - don't even _think_ about getting close enough for him to poison you," the Doctor called over to her, a touch panicky.  "Get away from here.  Run.  Run!"

"Well, you say that," Carson put in airily.  "But I think you're underestimating the extent to which Ace really does _not_ want me to put this knife any further into your throat."

Ace shouted, "Don't you hurt him!  Don't you fucking _dare_!"

Carson smirked.  "Aw, look at you two, desperately trying to save each other.  Aren't you sweet.  Now."  His eyes held her own, piercing, steady.  It was borderline insane to find yourself in a staring competition with your own face.  "Come here, or I _will_ kill him."

"You kill him and your plan fails," Ace pointed out.

"No it doesn't.  I don't need him alive.  I only need his form, his clothes, and his fake missus."

Shit.  That was actually true.  Ace's exhausted brain tried and tried to find the flaw in Carson's argument, but it seemed that the position of power was his alone.

The Doctor, weakly, called, "Please run, Ace.  Please."  He said it like he knew she wasn't going to do so: not in a million years.

And Carson lifted his borrowed chin, flashed Ace a look of teasing triumph, and then his head and neck blurred, and blurred, and suddenly the Doctor was being held against a humanoid body, still of Ace-proportions, clad in familiar Colonis-coveralls...but topped with a long, sinuous, reptilian neck.  The neck ended with a narrow head that was pretty much all gaping, hissing jaws.  Fangs glinted in the dappled light that penetrated the woodland canopy, and it was hard not to see their shine as the dew-drops of venom.

Ace swallowed hard and took a step closer, still desperately searching for the strategy that might neutralise this situation.  Problem was, she'd always dealt better with threats to herself than with threats to the people she cared about-

Then everything changed.

Overhead there came the high-pitched buzz of an anti-grav engine, and the trees rustled and creaked with the down-draught.  Sunshine penetrated the canopy where shadows had thrived before, and a tinny voice was pushed through the high-tech crystalline equivalent of a loud-hailer:

"Lay down your weapon and surrender.  I am armed, and will fire unless you comply."

Soo Min's skimmer had found its way to a position over the clearing, and with pretty much perfect timing.

~~~

 

 _Day Eight_  
_2:30 pm_

 

Carson hadn't relinquished his penknife.  Nor did he relinquish his big snakey-head, though as far as Ace was concerned this also counted as a weapon.

Keenan, up in the skimmer, didn't give him more than three seconds to comply before she made good on her threat.  She was probably the least gun-shy person Ace had ever met.  The tree canopy must have obstructed at least part of the view into the clearing, but still there came the echoing crack of a rifle firing.  Keenan was proficient.  The shot grazed the side of Carson's snakey-head, making his whole neck-and-head ensemble flinch back.  He hissed at the skimmer and dragged the Doctor over to the right, where the canopy thickened and removed them from sight.

Even as they moved, Carson's head and neck morphed back into an Ace-shape.  "Ow," he complained.  "That really hurt."  Unfortunately the gouge of the bullet had healed as soon as Carson's shape had shifted.

Ace, meanwhile, had decided she was damned if she was going to stand by and see the Doctor threatened any longer.  She'd used the distraction of the skimmer to reach for the one weapon that might serve her: one of the marbles of Nine-A from the pocket on her upper arm.

From the air, Keenan's voice said, "The next shot will not be a warning."

It was a shame that the first one had been.  Still, the extra distraction allowed Ace to palm her explosive before Carson's attention was back on her.

At which point more reinforcements arrived: a dark and furry gorilla-face appeared in the trees just behind where Carson held the Doctor at blade-point.  Smit checked out what was happening, eyes darting here and there.  He did a double take when he realised there were two Aces in the vicinity.  Since she was no longer wearing the things that might have distinguished her from the Carson-copy - her jacket, the sling on her arm or her telepathy headband - Ace decided to make it obvious.

"Hey Carson," she called across the clearing, for Smit's benefit.  "For the record?  Exotic shape-changing metamorph you may be, but you're seriously dull in bed."

In front of Carson, the Doctor's eyes closed slowly in disappointment.  Ace didn't have time to worry about that.  Carson, riled by the comment as Ace had hoped he would be, called back, "Suppose you'd have liked me better in this form, eh?  So you could fuck _yourself_."

But the comment had served its purpose.  Hidden from Carson's view, Gorilla-Anders offered Ace a big thumbs-up that, in other circumstances, would have been funny.  Then he took aim at Carson-as-Ace with his blowpipe.  Unfortunately he couldn't get much of an angle for the shot, since Carson had positioned himself such that his back was protected by a broad tree trunk.

Ace rolled her marble of Nine-A in her hand, checking the tiny bump on the sphere: it was the fused device, not the one which would detonate on impact.  She pressed the bump gently, waited for it to respond to her fingerprint and activate, and as soon as the bump retracted she was ready.  She began the fuse's countdown in her head.

Ten seconds.  Ace feigned a gasp of shock and looked up at the place where the skimmer hovered, still trying to define its own angle to intervene once again.  This made Carson look too.  Eight seconds.  Ace tossed the explosive to the left.  Six seconds.  Carson turned back and glared at her suspiciously as soon as he realised that the skimmer wasn't doing anything shocking.  Five seconds.  Ace looked innocently back at him.

Three...two...one...

Boom.

A patch of woodland about three metres in diameter exploded into a shower of soil, bracken and wooden splinters.  Ace had been ready and turned her face away.  The skimmer whirred and gained some height, which was just as well because one of the taller beech-like trees had been partially uprooted by the explosion and was now creaking alarmingly.  Nine-A packed quite the wallop.

Carson, fortunately, did not react to the loud bang by stabbing the Doctor in the neck, probably because he realised that the hostage card was the only one he had left to play.  But he did react - naturally enough - by moving away from the explosion.  He dragged the Doctor with him, but the Doctor dug in his heels.  Ace could see that the Doctor's relative position was blocking Gorilla-Anders's shot with the blowpipe.

The damaged tree creaked some more and began to topple.  Carson's attention was now focused on working out where the large tree was likely to smash into the ground.  Ace used the way Carson wasn't watching her to move, and fast.  Even as Carson tried to drag the Doctor around to where they could safely avoid the falling tree, Ace positioned herself.  She knew what she had to do.  She had to make Carson look at her while keeping the Doctor in front of him, such that the back of Carson's neck was nice and clear and exposed for Smit to aim at.

The falling tree caught on the lower branches of other trees, settled, slipped further, then stopped.  Which was fortunate, because Ace's position had placed her close to the danger zone if the blown-up tree decided to keep heading for the ground.

Carson yelled, "For the love of fucking Tas!"  Presumably the Metaskya equivalent of 'god'.  He was still more focused on looking up, because the canopy that had provided him with decent cover from the skimmer had now been parted and pinned back by the falling tree, and the line of sight from above was notably improved.  From the tone of his borrowed voice, Carson did not seem at all happy with the current chaos.

"Hey Carson," Ace said, voice raised to compete with the sound of the skimmer as it hovered lower once again.  She reached down and withdrew her shiny silver revolver, and she aimed it as well as she could, two-handed, at the face that mirrored her own, thanking her stars that adrenaline was a fabulous way of gaining some temporary pain-relief.  "Not that you'll get the reference or anything, but - do you feel lucky, punk?"

Carson yanked the Doctor in front of him to shield his body from the barrel of the gun.  He bared his teeth at her, perhaps forgetting that he was not in the form of a predatory feline.  "Think you could make that shot?" he called over the Doctor's shoulder.

"Well obviously not, you fuckwit," Ace said.  She just wanted to keep him talking, long enough for Smit to make the shot that actually mattered.  "For a start, my shoulder should be in a sling because I dislocated it about an hour ago.  Hurts like a bastard, if it makes you feel better."  Carson just sneered.  "For seconds," she went on, and waved the revolver a bit, "this shiny piece of phallic engineering will kick like a bucking bronco.  Never considered that to be a good bit of weapons-design, personally, but there you go.  Mainly, though, I'm not going to risk hurting the Doctor."  Her eyes narrowed.  "Even though he's got some serious apologising to do once we're finished here."

The Doctor all but pouted.  "What did _I_ do?"

"I'll explain later," she deadpanned.

"Oh, very funny."

Smit was taking his time, getting his shot lined up.  Understandable, perhaps, since he was on his last needle.  The skimmer was hovering nicely.  Ace glanced up to see Keenan leaning out over the edge of the craft, wielding a rifle with an unfeasibly long barrel and lots of high-tech stuff mounted on top, desperately trying to claim a new line-of-sight on the bad guy.  Ace looked back to see that Carson had also noticed the renewed threat from above.  He was moving closer to her, pushing the Doctor ahead as he went, staying under the cover of the half-fallen tree.  Another three steps and he'd be out of clear range from Smit.  Ace therefore did the only thing she could, and - with a yell of frustration - started to run towards Carson.

Carson stopped, surprised.  Then he tightened his grip around the Doctor's throat and tried to look menacing.  Ace made a mental note that her face could, indeed, look quite fierce, but Carson's menace didn't last.  The hostage-threat had dissipated in the last minute and a half, and Carson seemed to realise this.  The hand which held that obscene penknife moved from the Doctor's neck and pointed the blade at Ace, trying to warn her not to come closer.

The Doctor, no longer concerned with the immediate problem of arterial severance, twisted and stepped aside from what Carson had no doubt thought was a strong grip.  Carson flailed at him.  The Doctor ducked and moved neatly out of range, pausing only to glance up at the skimmer and doff his hat.

Ace stopped running and grinned at Carson, who suddenly didn't seem to have enough eyes to keep track of every other individual in the vicinity.  The skimmer was part-hidden by the semi-toppled tree, but Ace could still force her angle to give Anders Smit his shot.

"So anyway, I've been wondering," she said between pants.  "What the hell is it with you?  Parents and children - I mean, what's the issue?  Mummy didn't love you?"

Carson-as-Ace grew outraged and opened his mouth to reply, or shout obscenities, or something.  The words never appeared.  Ace watched as Carson's eyes rolled back.  He stood there for a moment, still wearing his stolen body, still making Ace feel queasy with the weirdness of watching all this shit happen to her own physical self.

Then his legs gave out, and he slumped face-first into the ground.  Sticking out of the back of Carson's neck was a tiny needle.

Ace jumped up and punched the air.  "Yes!" she cried.  "Fucking yes yes _yes_!"

Then she winced in pain and reached to cradle her arm.  Punching the air with the arm attached to the shoulder you recently dislocated was, as it turned out, a really bad idea.

~~~

 

 _Day Eight_  
_2:35 pm_

 

Carson had been disabled.  This murderous metamorph no longer demanded the laser-sighted focus of Ace's attention.

There was a brief moment where she wondered, absurdly, _'Okay.  So what was I supposed to be doing, again?'_   The answer began to appear as a tiny glint in her mind: less of a thought, more like one of the mental particles that might make up a thought if enough of them got together.  It suggested the necessity for a treaty, but was stopped before coherence could be achieved.

The rest of the universe whooshed in towards Ace with the tumult of gale-force winds.  She felt her own legs give way, perhaps with relief or with fatigue or with the aftermath of injury and terror and that maelstrom of confused feelings that seemed to go with being in the Doctor's company once again.  Moments later she was sitting on the ground, surrounded by soil and bits of broken tree, feeling as if she might pass out, or break down, or do something similarly unhelpful.

Fortunately she was no stranger to the sudden onset of panic.  Reflex made her inhale through her nose and then exhale through her mouth, once, twice, thrice.  She visualised the tension that gripped her body being breathed away.

Feeling slightly more settled, Ace activated her wrist-communicator.  Keenan's flushed face, hair swept wildly about with the air currents above the trees, appeared on the screen.

"Ace!  You okay?" the enforcer demanded.

"Tired.  Really fucking tired."  Ace smiled tightly.  "Anders got him.  He's out."

"Yes!" crowed Keenan, sounding remarkably like Ace had sounded thirty seconds earlier.  "Does he still have that snake-head?  That was freaky."

"No, he lost that when you winged him.  He, er..."  Ace grimaced.  "He looks like someone else now."

"Right.  Sorry I missed, anyway.  I was going for the kill."

"It was still a hell of a shot."

Keenan grinned.  "Everyone has their talents.  It made a difference?"

"Between the two of us, we managed to force him back to a place Anders could do his thing."

"Good day's work, then.  Okay, so you need us to stick around?"

Ace tried to think about the practicalities.  "Might be useful for now, if it isn't awkward.  I'm guessing there's going to be a clearing-up exercise."  She sighed.  "I sort of broke the forest."

"That was you?"

"Yeah.  I feel bad."

Keenan huffed dismissively.  "Trees grow back.  Parents and their kiddies don't.  Think you made the right call."

"Hmm."

"But Ace - you have _got_ to show me your explosives."

"Enforcer Keenan, you have a one-track mind."

Keenan grinned.  "Stop flirting with me.  Des'll get jealous."

"Okay," Ace agreed, too tired to be startled.

"Sort out what you've got to sort out with Anders down there.  We'll stay close, but Soo Min wants to lift us up a bit higher - this close to the trees isn't good for the anti-gravs."

"No probs."

"Just let us know what you need when you need it."

Ace nodded at the screen.  "Roger, wilco and out, mate."

She closed the connection and looked over at the prone body of Carson-as-Ace.  Next job?  Well, she wanted to go to the Doctor and check the wound in his neck, but Smit had climbed down from his tree and was bounding over to her, still in his gorilla-thing form.  Halfway across the clearing his form blurred until he was a naked bloke once again.  Ace struggled to her feet and tried very hard to remember how to feel energised and competent.

"Nice shot, Anders," she told him.  His nudity wasn't something she really noticed any more.

He glanced at her and nodded, but he was more concerned with ducking under the half-fallen tree in order to inspect the unconscious body of Carson.  Ace joined him.  Smit rolled the body so it lay face-up.

So that was what she looked like when she was unconscious.  Weird.

"Okay then," she said.  She took a moment to swallow the discomfort of seeing her own body lying, pale and prone, in the soil and the leaves.  "So what now?"

Across the clearing, the Doctor shouted, "Ace, come away from there!"

She waved at him distractedly, her attention on Smit.  Now they'd removed Carson's ability to threaten people or make an escape, she realised she didn't have much in the way of detail regarding what happened next.  "You said 'due process' before," she reminded him.

"I'm going to end his life, Ace," Smit said gently.

"Right.  Well.  He deserves it, I s'pose."

Smit shook his head.  "I'm going to do this because while he's alive he threatens the safety of my people."  Smit frowned at her, as if concerned she should understand this distinction.  "Not for any of the other things he's done."

"Oh."

"But if it makes you feel better," Smit added, "this is the eighth planet where Carson has committed murder.  That's just the ones I know about, since I've been tracking him.  What does your culture usually do to murderers?"

"Depends where they're from.  Different systems in different places."

"But the point is that you make sure they can't murder ever again, right?"

"S'pose."

Ace considered.  If they didn't finish Carson, right here and now, chances were he'd find a way to get free.  At which point his life would be driven once more by his compulsion to kill.  So.  They could execute Carson, and save all the lives that would otherwise be ended by this rogue metamorph.  Or they could shy away from such a cold-blooded act, and acknowledge that any future murders would be partly their fault.

She realised, in a flash of discomfort, that these were the decisions the Doctor needed to make on a semi-regular basis.  The loss of one life versus the loss of many; the eradication of a great evil, but only thanks to an act that might be considered evil in itself...

"Ace," Smit said, pulling her out of her reverie.  "It's okay.  This isn't down to you.  This isn't your problem.  It's mine.  My responsibility."  His dark eyes held her own.

Okay, so that made it easier.  That kind of worked, for her.  In fact it worked just a little bit too well.

Ace wasn't given to passing the buck.

"Would you like to borrow the revolver?" Ace asked.  "Which does - by the way - make this my responsibility too."

Smit nodded and took the Smith and Wesson from her.  "Stand back."

"Oh.  Ricochets.  Right."  Ace moved back a little.

The Doctor shouted, "Ace - come here!"

Smit took aim.  Then he glanced at her.  "It's my job," he said again.

"I know."

But Smit looked uncomfortable.  "I've got more to worry about than...you've got to understand - this is for my entire _race_.  So many people hate us.  Or want to exploit us.  If I don't stop this here, I risk...I risk-"

"I get it," Ace said, wondering what he was trying to justify.

The Doctor's voice was growing ever more frantic.  "Ace - please!"  When she glanced his way, he had given up on beckoning her to him and was stomping over to her, looking like he was going to sling her over a shoulder and carry her away.

Smit lowered the hand which aimed the gun.  He raised his other arm and it blurred and morphed into a shiny, spiky appendage that did not look entirely unlike the leg of an Irrizor hive member.  The appendage glinted for a moment, then Smit drove it downwards, hard.  It pierced the right eye of Carson-as-Ace, then it pierced the whole head, then a bit of woodland mulch underneath.  Carson's borrowed body arched and spasmed for three or four of the most repulsive seconds Ace had ever experienced, then the body slumped bonelessly back to the ground.

The appendage was retracted.  The eye was a messy mush, and a bead or two of blood seeped from the wound, but there was no more gore than that.

Only at this point did Ace gasp in shock and cover her mouth with a hand.  It was a difficult thing to process, seeing your own body violently ended in such a way.  Smit bent down and checked the body for a pulse.  He nodded to himself.

Ace wondered why he'd taken the gun from her when he hadn't needed it.

The Doctor drew near, fighting comically with the foliage from the upended tree that now filled part of the clearing.  She looked to him, mainly so she didn't have to look at the body on the ground.  She saw that he had tied a Paisley-print handkerchief around his neck to cover the wound made by Carson's penknife.  She immediately felt bad about having ignored him in the minutes since Carson's incapacitation.

The Doctor's eyes widened at something over her shoulder and he shouted, "No - don't!"

What happened next happened fast.

Ace followed the Doctor's gaze to see that Smit's naked form had stepped out from the cover of the half-fallen tree.  He raised the Smith and Wesson with both hands and took aim at the skimmer which now hovered at a higher altitude over the clearing.  With a thunderclap the revolver discharged.  The skimmer's high-pitched buzz whined and then shrieked, as the engines complained and tried to compensate.  It seemed that Smit had hit some important bit of the craft.

Ace couldn't make sense of this.  Nor could she make sense of the way Smit spun and pointed the revolver at her.

"Sorry," Smit yelled over the labouring sound of the skimmer.  "It's my job.  I have to protect my people."

Smit's finger tightened.

Something pushed Ace to the ground.

A bullet carved a path through the air where - a fraction of a second ago - her head had been.

Smit adjusted his aim.

The Doctor used his momentum to roll himself and Ace along the ground, further away from Smit and the fallen tree and through a patch of thorny bracken.

Another shot hit the woodland floor mere centimetres from where their bodies rolled.

With a roar that hurt Ace's ears, a skimmer fell out of the sky and through the trees, to land port-side first on a half-felled borgrash tree a handful of metres behind them.  The tree-and-skimmer formed a dangerous, tangled embrace, all hard edges and slamming weight, and crashed together the rest of the way to the woodland floor.

The Doctor kept rolling, even as a dry, hot shockwave hit them.  Bracken and branches whipped and tore at Ace's body, but she tried to move with the Time Lord.  She didn't stop until the Doctor stopped rolling.

The air grew caustic with a pungent smell of ozone and burning plastic.  Electrical systems in the skimmer sparked and fizzed.  Splintered wood on the fallen tree caught the sparks and began to smoulder, adding the smell of wood-smoke.

The Doctor said, very close to her ear, "So that's how it happened."

Ace looked at him, still tucked half-underneath his body.  His face was smudged with forest-dirt and his own blood.  He was studying the crash site through narrowed, watering eyes.

"Is he still coming?  Is he still shooting?"  She swallowed hard and realised her ears were ringing.  "I can't hear properly!"

"He's underneath all that," the Doctor said, though she lip-read the words more than heard them.  "He's dead."

She let her head slump back to the ground.  She closed her eyes and swallowed a few times, to try to clear her ears.  When she opened her eyes again, she found that she was still trapped in the burning, splintered nightmare that the green, lush woodland had become.

"What the hell just happened?" she asked.

The Doctor turned his attention away from the wreckage, and looked at her as if noticing her for the first time.  His smile was sad, but didn't lack welcome.  "Hello, you," he said.

"Hi.  You okay?"

There was another crash from the site of the wreck as something slipped and fell further.  The shadows of the trees were being replaced by flickering orange: flames taking hold.

The Doctor rolled off Ace and pushed up to his knees.  "I'm perfectly all right."

"Good.  So.  What just happened?"

"The other metamorph," he said.  "His job here wasn't done until everyone who knew of his race's existence was wiped out."

"He was supposed to be on our side!"

"He was only ever on the side of the Metaskya.  If he hadn't been stopped here, today, in this forest, he'd have killed every single person on this planet who knew of his nature."  The Doctor glanced at Ace.  "You'll know better than me how many people are on that list."

Ace shook her head.  "Too many."  Desmond Sykes and his assistant, Shah Akasella, Keenan and Chauhan, the ambassador...and given the hive nature of the Irrizor, one hive member's awareness of the Metaskya would inevitably mean that the whole hive was aware.  Smit's sweeping-up exercise would have resulted in exactly the kind of genocide that Ace had been trying to avoid.

They stood up.  The tangle of dead tree and smashed skimmer now formed a barrier between where they stood and the clearing.  The barrier was beginning to burn vigorously.  Underneath all that were the bodies of two metamorphs, if the Doctor was right.  Ace assumed it was a good sign that Smit hadn't yet staggered clear of the wreckage like Arnie at the end of that movie, when he was supposed to be dead but he wasn't dead enough, waving the revolver that she'd been stupid enough to hand right over to him.

And it wasn't just her.  Keenan had said she should give the gun to Anders.  Sensible, well-trained, slightly-gung-ho Keenan!  Who'd been waiting for further instructions in a skimmer alongside a talented pilot named Soo Min-

Ace's slow-motion thoughts finally tumbled free of the shock of the last sixty seconds.  "Keenan!" she yelled.  "Oh, god, you've got to help me, Doctor!  They might be alive in there!"

She raced over to the wreckage, but the heat from the fires forced her back and made her lift her good arm to protect her face.  She looked frantically about, trying to work out the best way of getting closer.  The skimmer's fall had been broken by the trees.  It hadn't exactly exploded, had it?  It wasn't unthinkable that the passengers had survived.  They might be trapped.  Ace brought her wrist up, to try to contact Keenan using the comms device, but as soon as she saw the cracked, bent screen on her arm she realised that the device hadn't survived the fall-and-roll.  She snatched it from her arm and chucked it petulantly to the ground.

Of course, this explained why it hadn't yet beeped with a call from Sykes on the plateau, wondering why the forest was on fire.  But it didn't help Keenan.  Ace made another attempt to move closer-

"Ace," the Doctor said, stepping alongside her.  He reached for her shoulders and tugged her away from the burning mess of metal and polymers and wood.  She resisted for a moment, but he could be insistent when he wanted, and - oh, god - she was so very tired.

He guided her around the wreckage, looping back towards the clearing, until they reached a spot where they could see the sky.  Then he pointed upwards.

Ace squinted into the blue, and saw - blessed relief! - a distant parachute with some kind of ejector-seat below it.

"Oh thank god.  Oh, thank you thank you thank you."  She exhaled hard, breathing her relief into the smoky forest.  "Did they both get out?" Ace asked.  "Keenan and the pilot, too?  Did you see?"

The Doctor's eyes closed momentarily, and he squeezed at his brow.  "They'll find two bodies here," he said.  "Or what's left of them, once the fire is out.  Which will not be very much at all."  He looked piercingly at her.  "One of them will be identified as Ace McShane.  And one of them will be identified as some kind of metamorph."

Ace stared at him for a moment.  "You knew this would happen."

"No."  He grimaced at himself.  "Yes."  He glanced at Ace, at her widening eyes, and hurriedly went on, "I knew what would be found.  I didn't know _how_ it happened."

"You thought...you thought it was going to be _my_ body that was found."

The silence that wrapped around them after that comment could only have lasted five seconds, but it felt like five years.

"Yes," the Doctor finally said.

He'd left her here to die.  She had needed to be a part of these events, so the treaty would get written and it would be given her name, in memoriam.  So he'd left her here, knowing that at the end of the process her body would turn up dead, burned to a crisp underneath a crashed skimmer in a forest.

"How could you?" she whispered.

"How could I what?"

"Leave me!"

Only he hadn't done that, had he?  She'd been so sure he'd left the liner in orbit; that he'd left the whole timeframe they currently knew.  She thought he'd gone off with Doriel, to drag that poor, traumatised kid kicking and screaming through her adolescence, to teach her to manage her demons.  To seal up her emotional cracks with beautiful gold lacquer.

But he was right here, in this burning forest.  The TARDIS was a few minutes' walk to the south.  When first she'd realised that he'd come back, he'd been yelling her name, yelling that they had to get away from this place...

Ace swallowed hard.  "Oh god.  Is-is that why you wanted us to get away from here?"

The Doctor pinched his lips together.  "I thought..."  He couldn't seem to find the words, and after a moment he just shook his head and looked away.  "Doesn't matter.  It's over now."

Ace saw red.  Everything that had happened in the last week, everything that had contributed to this entirely screwed-up situation, and all it got was a shake of the head and a 'doesn't matter'?  People had died.  _Children_ had died.  And she'd been abandoned on a muddy colony in the company of a serial killer, feeling so much loss and grief that she'd shared a killer's bed in an attempt to stave off the abject loneliness of being without the Doctor.

He'd thought she was going to die, and he'd left her here to fend for herself, and now he couldn't even try to find a few words to make her understand?  The mist of rage descended.  She reached for his shoulder, even as he tried to turn and walk away, and she forced him back around to face her.

Then she raised her fist and lamped the Doctor right across the jaw.

He staggered back and then fell.  Ace clenched her teeth and clutched her right arm to her chest, since it was now throbbing with the kind of pain that made her vision blotchy.  Damn it, she kept forgetting that she was in no fit state to do anything with that injured bloody arm.

Of course, as soon as the last two seconds caught up with her, the pain stopped mattering because she felt like she deserved it.  Trying to justify her fury, she said, "You left me!  You just bloody left me!  I thought you weren't coming back!"

The Doctor sat up and massaged his jaw.  "I needed to find a way to save you," he said.

"You left!"

"I know!"  He huffed a sigh.  "I thought at first I should stay here and watch over you, guide events, but all that I did seemed to make it worse-"

"I was on my own.  No one to help.  You left me here, and that murdering bastard carved my name on a little girl!  My name!  With her blood!  I had to look at that, and I couldn't save her, and you _weren't even here_!"

"I couldn't work out what to do - not without the resources of the TARDIS!"

"So?"

"I couldn't just let it happen.  Not the way history said it had to."  He looked desperate, distressed, beside himself.  Ace got a flash of memory: the Doctor looking at her with the same expression back in 1940's England, in a muddy field outside an exploded building.

His distress made her angrier, but mainly at herself.  She compensated with more outrage.  "You should have told me!" she shouted.  "I thought I was never going to see you again!"

"You weren't the only one!" he shouted back.

"I thought you'd abandoned me!"

"I came back to save you," he insisted.

"Oh, ta very much."

His distress turned to anger.  "Don't you realise what this means?  I was prepared to disregard the laws of _time_ for you!"

"Well you're an idiot, then, aren't you?"

The Doctor blazed for a moment more, then his ire collapsed.  He looked weary.  "Perhaps," he murmured.  His eyes shone: no longer stormy grey but bluer-than-blue.  "I couldn't let you die."

"I didn't."  Ace raised her arms, then let them fall to her sides again.  "Here I am."  She winced at the throb in her shoulder.  "Ow."  A bit sheepishly she stepped forward and offered him her left hand.  "So, um," she mumbled, "prob'ly shouldn't have hit you."

He took her hand and let her help him up.  "Yes.  Well, then," he said.  There was a red patch to the left hand side of his mouth which, Ace suspected, would bloom into quite the bruise.  There was blood on his lip, too.  She'd managed to save him from Carson's penknife only to injure him herself.  God, what the hell was it with her?  She cared for this man beyond words, but she was happy to wallop him around?

"It's just...you know."  She shrugged the shoulder that didn't hurt too badly.  "Things got a bit fraught.  Today."

"Yes.  They did."

There was an awkward pause.

"I can't go and say goodbye to anyone, can I?" she said quietly.

"Best not."

Ace nodded.  "Yeah.  Right."  She looked away from the Doctor, away from the burning wreckage, and tried to find some calmness in the green of the distant trees.  "I'll be fine," she said, mainly to herself.  "It'll just take a bit of...you know."

"Are you ready to leave?" the Doctor asked.

"I think we'd better," she said.  "Since the forest is on fire and I'm s'posed to be dead."  She sensed him looking at her, but she didn't meet his gaze.  She didn't want to acknowledge the fact that his eyes had produced some genuine tears in the last two minutes.

It would just take a bit of time.  A good eight hours of sleep, some proper food, and a bit of time and distance.  That was all she needed.

The Doctor sighed and turned away, and Ace followed him as they left the burning woodland behind, heading back to the TARDIS.

She'd be right as rain.  She always was, after all.  Wasn't she?

~~~


	11. Epilogue

_The TARDIS_

_Day Eight_  
_Later_

 

In the medical bay, Ace sat quietly on a gurney while the Doctor manoeuvred the deep tissue repair module on its multi-angled arm over her shoulder.

"You've torn the labrum, which is hardly surprising," the Doctor said as he peered into the module's screen and assessed the damage.  "You've injured your biceps tendon.  And your rotator cuff looks like it needs some attention."

"It doesn't hurt as much as it did," Ace pointed out.  Though this probably had quite a lot to do with the way she wasn't waving her arms around any more.

"Hold still."  The module was switched into one of its repair modes, and Ace felt a sensation in her shoulder joint that suggested the tiniest of tugs accompanied by warmth.  "Still-er than that," he added, and then he sighed and snapped off the module.  "Do I have to immobilise the rest of you?"

Ace realised she was fidgeting and made herself stop.  "Sorry."  She breathed more steadily, and concentrated on being a good patient.  The module was reactivated, and her torn muscles and tendons and whatever else she'd messed up in the shoulder joint all began to receive some high-tech attention.

It was going to take some time.  Of course, an hour or so with a space-age medical module was preferable to surgery and then weeks of rehab, but the problem was that this hour was being spent alone in a quiet space with the Doctor.  There was a new tension underlying their partnership.  For the first time in a very long time, Ace found herself uncomfortable in the Doctor's company.  Ten minutes earlier, as they'd returned to the TARDIS, she'd even tried to argue that her shoulder was fine and she only needed to get some rest.  The Doctor hadn't deigned to reply.  He'd merely placed a hand on her good shoulder and steered her towards the medical bay.  His gentleness was daunting.  Harrowing.  She hadn't been able to argue further.

After long minutes of silence broken only by the whirr and beeps of technology, Ace surprised herself when she said:

"It was my fault."

The Doctor drew a deep breath and then adjusted the module against her shoulder.  "How so?"

"People died.  They died in the worst way imaginable.  Pain and terror and helplessness.  And it was my fault."

"Ace-"

"Turns out I didn't go to Colonis and change it for the better.  I made bad things happen and then raced around desperately trying to fix them."  She sighed.  "They should name that treaty 'Thank fuck we got rid of McShane before she did any more damage'."

"And how was it your fault that the metamorph killed those poor people?  Did you kill his brother?"

"What?"  Ace blinked with the effort it took not to wrench her head around and look at the Doctor.

"The metamorph's brother.  Kidnapped by a ransom-gang when he travelled through the D'Renu system."

"And the kidnappers killed him?"

"Oh no.  No, that was the sweeper that the Metaskya sent out there when Carson's brother broke the rules and admitted to his species.  Rock and a hard place, really.  The ransom-gangs have a reputation for ruthlessness.  You don't provide a family contact from whom they can extort money?  They kill you.  Immediately.  From their point of view, if they can't use you for income then they can at least use you as a stern lesson to their future victims."

"So Carson went psycho because a sweeper killed his brother?"

"Well - nature versus nurture is a big question.  One better men than I have wrestled with."  The Doctor lifted his head from the module and turned away from her, as if captivated by the doorway.  "I'm relatively convinced that it's never one or the other, but rather a combination of both."  A pause, then he shook his head and bent once again to the module.  "In any case, Carson's mother took her own life after learning of what happened to her firstborn.  She left a note, claiming that no parent should outlive their child.  It seems young Carson - or whatever his true name might be - took that to heart in quite an extreme way."  He sighed.  "Of course, that little tragedy fails to explain the delight he took in sadistically bullying his peers for years before his brother's unfortunate fate."

Ace frowned.  "How do you know about all this?"

"I knew one of the victims of the crash was a metamorph.  Contrary to the imaginative fiction your species likes to produce, pure metamorphs are as rare throughout the galaxies as..."

"Rocking horse shit?"

"Rarer.  Let's say unicorn dung."

"Okay."

"Of course, there are plenty of species with partial shift capabilities.  The Zygons, for example.  But the kind of self-contained and complete shapeshifting that the Metaskya can do is almost unique.  Which is why they are so feared, and envied, and vulnerable as a species.  And which is why I knew where to look.  Once I had a better idea of what I was looking for."

"So you researched."

"When do I not?"

"Fair point."

"I learned the Metaskya were seeking a rogue at a time that matched the establishment of Colonis.  The back-story wasn't difficult to obtain after that."

"When?"

"When what?"

"When did you know all this?"

"When I went back to the TARDIS.  When I knew what I needed to research."

"Oh.  Well, whatever."

The Doctor leaned away from the module and looked her in the eye.  "The point being, it was not your fault."

"Yeah, except I wasn't talking whys and wherefores, I was talking practicalities.  Like how I got Carson's penknife through customs.  What about that?"

"Do you honestly think he couldn't have arranged a different weapon for himself if he'd been denied that penknife?"

"S'pose," she agreed gloomily.

"You just witnessed another metamorph make his own arm into a rather effective weapon-"

"Okay, I get it!  But he still killed people because of me."

The Doctor shook his head dismissively and bent back to the module.  "He killed people because he was a killer."

"I don't mean that!  I mean, he should've been caught quicker.  _My_ fault that he wasn't."

"And how does that work?"

"Carson used me.  Made sure I was always with him.  Anders couldn't do anything, not so long as there was a witness.  He was all about the covert."  She moved her eyes to glance to the right; all she could see of the Doctor was the top of his head above the module he peered through.  "Bit like you, actually.  Hey - different circumstances, and you and Anders might have got on.  Pair of blokes with a common love of keeping the rest of the universe in the dark."

She heard the Doctor breathe again.  The quiet between them lengthened, just enough to feel uncomfortable.

Finally he said, softly, "I couldn't tell you."

"What?  That you thought you were taking me to my death?  Well, course not.  I might have buggered up the universe by saying, 'Know what?  Don't really fancy that.'"

"You wouldn't have said that," the Doctor dismissed.  "Knowing what was at stake, you'd have squared your shoulders and lifted your chin and given Colonis your most determined look, and you'd have said, 'All right then, universe, let's do it.'"

Ace thought about this, and realised that the Doctor was probably right.  Because what was the choice?  The timeline had required her presence on Colonis; the Doctor had been certain about that.  She could have walked away and saved herself, but apparently that would have resulted in Colonis tearing itself apart.  And if Colonis had failed then humanity's expansion into the galaxy would have been halted, at least for a while.  Given the Dalek war that was coming in only a few short decades...well, it didn't bear thinking about.  Anything that scared humanity into keeping themselves crowded into one tiny solar system might prove catastrophic to her entire species.  She knew, by now, how small events triggered massive consequences.

So yeah, she'd have probably decided that she'd rather be dead than responsible for the destruction of a colony, possibly even the annihilation of her race.

"So what was the problem, then?" she said.  "I mean, you're probably right - if you'd told me then I'd've just got on with it."

"I couldn't risk telling you.  Whether your awareness made you more cautious or more reckless, either way it could have altered your actions."

"Like you were worried your meddling was altering them too?"

He sighed.  "Yes."

"So why come with me at all?  Why not just drop me off, tell me you'd be back in a few days, leave me to figure things out?"

"Because you might have been able to accept it, but I couldn't!  I thought I could change what happened!"  He'd raised his voice for the first time since they'd settled into the medical bay.  There was a pause.  She heard a shaky intake of breath.  More sedately, he went on, "I ran simulation after simulation.  I tried everything I could think of.  I needed to know what it was you did while on Colonis that made the difference.  Once I knew that, I thought I could replicate those events without risking you."

"So what was it?  What did I do?"

"I still don't know.  Not exactly.  A combination of things.  Connections to people; trusts established.  The way you speak.  The way you make people react."  His shoulders moved with a shrug.  "Just you being you."

Ace frowned and looked down at her lap.  "So how long have you known about this?"

"About Colonis?"  He moved the module to the back of her shoulder and walked around to the rear of the gurney.  Maybe he even thought he was being subtle about the way he was hiding his face.  "Too long."

"How long?"

"Months."

Ace narrowed her eyes.  "That's why you've been doing all those nice things for me?" she asked, suspiciously.  "Picnics and Wembley tickets and a birthday weekend at Woodstock?"

"I hadn't admitted defeat, Ace," he snapped.

"But you were making the most of what time we had left, just in case."

A pause.

"There may have been an element of that," he finally acknowledged.  "But only because it is in my nature to play the probabilities."

Ace nodded to herself.  "So what did you think you could do, when we first got to Colonis?"

"Nudges," the Doctor said vaguely.  "Tweaks.  I thought I could expedite communication with the Irrizor, since I knew for certain that the survival of the colony relied on friendly first contact.  I tried to set up a role for you within the structure of the colony, since I thought if you were part of a team then you'd have more protection."

Another thought occurred.  "Why marriage?" she asked.

"What?"

"You took care of the back-story.  Never mind your magically-appearing tickets, you set everything up.  So why the fuck were we supposed to be married?"

"I'd have thought that was quite obvious, in hindsight."

She considered, and realised he was right.  "We needed to be close to the murder locations.  So we needed to be in the two-person family units."

"Yes."

"And it would have been pretty stupid to set us up as father and daughter or whatever on a colony where a serial killer was habitually murdering parent and child pairs."

"Yes."

"Okay."  Ace sighed.  "So you tweaked what you could, but it didn't work out."

"It took less than a day before I realised that my efforts were making things worse."

"So you removed yourself, just far enough to make me think I was on my own."

"I'm sorry," he said, surprising her because he so rarely said those words.  "It didn't occur to me that you would think I'd left for good.  At the time I was more focused on keeping you alive than on your sense of emotional well-being."

"But you were still tweaking and nudging.  You sorted out that telepathy device for me.  You brought in the Feds - why did you do that?"

"Because in every simulation I ran, the absence of the Federation led to civil war in the colony."

"Over the Irrizor."

"Over the Irrizor."  The Doctor moved the module again, then adjusted her arm's position in the straps where it rested, then returned the module to her shoulder.  "A small number of colonists favoured a pre-emptive attack on the Irrizor.  Wipe them out, before they ever got to be a problem."

"God," Ace muttered in disgust.  "May I apologise for my species?"

"'Fear is the mother of violence,'" the Doctor said, like it was a quotation.

Ace frowned.  "Yoda?"

"Peter Gabriel."

"Oh."

"But it's a universal constant, not just a human one."  He sniffed.  "Anyway, the Federation's presence was an effective deterrent.  Nipped the idea in the bud."

"But you were the one who arranged it so the Feds showed up.  So Colonis needed you as much as it apparently needed me."

"Perhaps."

She managed a small smirk.  "Nothing new for you, though, is it?  You're used to being the hidden influence that averts disaster."

"Don't underestimate the part you played on Colonis," the Doctor said.  "The timeline was adamant about your input."

"Then the timeline needs to pick its heroes better," Ace decided.  It seemed the conversation had come full circle, because she added, "However you look at this, Carson was able to keep killing because of me."

"You couldn't have prevented Silja Schacht's death."

"Well, no-"

"Or the two that followed.  The earliest that the sweeper might have neutralised the killer was the evening after those two deaths."

"Yeah, and he couldn't do it because I was there."

"Indeed."  Another shaken breath.  Ace hoped the Doctor wasn't dwelling on the reason why she'd been close to Carson that night, and so many nights after that one.  "The next murder attempts the killer made failed, as I understand it."

"Yeah, that's true-"

"So you cannot blame yourself for any deaths.  And you might want to consider this.  In the simulations where you were absent from Colonis, the killer's tally fluctuated between twenty-nine and sixty-three victims, depending on other variables."

"Sixty-three?  Oh, god."

"So at the most, you can blame yourself for two attempted murders that were thwarted."

"Isn't that enough?"

"And I also understand that you were instrumental in forming the rules that prevented further assaults."

"That was just common sense.  Anyone would have done that.  And it wouldn't have taken much longer before Carson decided on a new approach."

"But before that happened you identified him, and isolated him, and made sure he never commits another murder."

"I could identify him because I was bloody sleeping with him!"

A long pause, broken only by the way both of them were breathing too fast and doing their best to disguise this.

Finally:

"Ace, you did what you needed to do.  And you did magnificently."

"Yeah, well, I s'pose you did too," she said.  "Since I'm alive."

There was a harumph from behind her.  "I suspect that had less to do with my involvement and more to do with the fact that I missed a very salient point."

"That being?"

"One of the bodies discovered in the aftermath of the skimmer crash was identified as a metamorph.  It didn't occur to me that the other body might have been a metamorph too."

Ace found herself trying not to smile.  "So you might have got your knickers in a twist over nothing at all?"

"I wouldn't call being compelled to deliver you to the planet where your grave is located 'nothing'," he grouched.

The smile disappeared.  Whether or not the Doctor's belief that she might die on Colonis had been correct, the fact was that he had believed it.  And, it seemed, he'd lived with the notion for months on end.  Ace mused for a while on how she might deal with that kind of onerous sense of impending doom.  Would she be able to cope?  It was difficult to say.  Knowing she'd have been prepared to sacrifice herself to preserve the integrity of the timeline was one thing.  But what if preserving the timeline had required her to accept the sacrifice of the Doctor?

"I couldn't have done what you did," she said quietly.

"I nearly couldn't do it myself," he replied, in the same tone.

Ace nodded.

The silence between them stretched.  It felt like there was more to be said, but Ace was exhausted.  She was still shaken up by the showdown in the forest.  She felt guilty about walking away from people she'd come to care about: people who now thought she was dead.  Her thoughts were in disarray.  There was too much to process and she didn't have the energy or the focus to begin.  Not yet.

The tissue repair module whirred as its arm moved position.  Her shoulder was losing its residual soreness.

"What happens to Doriel?" Ace eventually asked.

"She's adopted," the Doctor said.  "Nice couple.  Father works as a teacher, mother's a civil engineer.  In twenty-two years she'll be relocated to the northernmost continent on Colonis to lead the construction project there.  Eight years after that she'll be elected the first governor of the city of Silmarren - a name, you might notice, that is formed from the names of the three victims of the metamorph, beginning with her mother's name."

"Nice one, Doriel," Ace murmured.

"Don't get me started on the accomplishments of her children and grandchildren."

"Good thing she threw that tantrum, then."

"A very good thing indeed."

Ace sighed.  "Wish I didn't feel like Renata Rossi might have done brilliant things with her life too, if only she'd lived past fourteen."

The module stopped, and the Doctor needed to reposition it.  He came around to the front of the gurney once again and spared her a brief glance.

"I wish I could have saved her too," he said.  "But even with the foreknowledge I had, too much changed with every passing moment.  And once I was a part of events..."  He tailed off.  He didn't need to explain those particular rules to Ace.

"Yeah."

"Ace, try to understand.  Everything that happened, this last week - it was for the best.  You created an outcome for Colonis that was as positive as it could possibly be.  It could have been so much worse.  Catastrophically."  He stood straight after positioning and locking the module to a new section of shoulder, and he reached to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear.  "You made a difference.  You were a force for good."  He swiped softly at the end of her nose and then bent to the module once more.

Things could have been worse.  She understood that.  Really.

Part of her still wanted to say, 'Yeah - tell that to Renata Rossi.'

They were quiet after that, right up until the moment the Doctor finished with the module and unstrapped her arm.  He took her through a series of arm movements, watching her face carefully for signs of discomfort.  Apart from the way her repaired muscles were tight and needed some gentle stretching, she was fine.

"Good as new," she claimed.

"Good," the Doctor agreed.  He sounded about as convinced as she had done.

Ace reached up to the handkerchief which still wrapped the Doctor's neck.  "We should see to this-"

He stepped away and turned around.  "It's fine," he said.  "It's just a small cut."

Ace stood up from the gurney and pinched at her lips.  "What about your jaw?" she asked.

He turned back to her, and half-lifted a hand to the blooming bruise beside his mouth before letting it fall away.  "It's fine," he said again.

She shook her head.  "I don't know what it was about that bloody colony," she said.  "Even before the shit hit the fan, I was shaking you about by your lapels and snarling in your face."  She blinked, hard, suddenly afraid that tears might come, but her eyes were so dry they prickled.  "I stood there watching that bastard stick a blade in your neck and I couldn't stand it.  Watching someone hurt you.  I'd've given anything to swap places.  And then ten minutes later I'm throwing punches!  _I'm_ doing the hurting."  She turned back to the gurney and leaned on it, because her own body weight felt like it was too much to carry.

"Ace-"

"Look, I'm sorry, okay?  I'm sorry.  I won't let it happen again."  She stood up straight and pressed the heel of her hand into the headache that was blooming across her forehead.  "Don't even know why I got so aggressive.  Not with you."

Her hand dropped.  She made herself look at the Doctor.  His gaze was calm, compassionate, with just a hint of alien otherness.

"Don't you?" he asked softly.

Ace frowned.  "No."  She was about to add, 'Why, do you?' but some kind of alarm went off in her brain and she swallowed the comment.  Instead she gave a half-hearted shrug.  "Maybe all that hostility was catching.  Contagious."  She shook her head at herself.  "Anyway, I need to sleep.  If we're all done here...?"

The Doctor hesitated for a moment before he nodded slowly.  "Get some rest."

"Yeah."  She tried a small smile.  "Feels like ages since I managed to do that."

"Sleep well, Ace."

She turned and left the medical bay, and she couldn't for the life of her work out why it felt just a bit like she was running away.

~~~~~~


End file.
